


Just We Two Against the World

by addictedtostorytelling



Series: I Believe in Good Things Coming [1]
Category: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:39:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4861604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addictedtostorytelling/pseuds/addictedtostorytelling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set between episodes 07x16 "Monster in the Box" and 07x17 "Fallen Idols." Canon compliant. "They’ve been secretly dating for nearly two years now, and they’ve gotten the logistics of it down to a science, all carefully choreographed entries and exits, sly innuendos, silences slyer still, tricks of the calendar, Mack and Rock’s principles of inattentional blindness regarding human expectation. To sometimes be able to pack up their car and drive to a mountain, their dog in tow—that’s the payoff for all the nights when one of them has to work and the other stays home, alone through a shift."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **This fic takes place within a larger alternate universe, which is canon compliant up to the events of episode 08x01 "Dead Doll" but starts to diverge from there. Since this story takes place during Season Seven, it still fits the CSI canon of the time.**

**March 2nd, 2007**

Hank started out as Grissom’s dog, but now he’s her dog, too, Grissom’s and Sara’s, together. They never actually discussed his ownership, but Hank made the decision, and it seems like a good one: he sleeps at the foot of the bed that they share, his muscled body draped across their feet; he solicits belly rubs from both of them in turns; he barks and sets himself between them and any perceived threats encountered en route during their morning walks, full of animal love and devotion; when one of them has to work and the other has off, he waits by the front door and whines, willing the working party to return home, and, once he gets his wish, he wags his tail, boundlessly happy. They are his humans, and he is their dog, and it feels—more than Sara can say—like they are a family, the three of them.

Sara suspects that someone looking at their family this morning would think that they were early risers, but the truth is, they’re night owls, and this pre-dawn hike up Fletcher Canyon is not an invigorating start to a new day but a relaxing end to a rare shared day off. She and Grissom spent their evening hours staying in, enjoying each other’s company, and now they want to get some fresh air before the start of their next shift. It’s a little after four-thirty, and the mountain is still and cool and dark, cloaked deep in night shade. Sara laces up her hiking shoes against the fender of Grissom’s car while Grissom holds Hank’s leash, waiting. Hank strains and strains for them to go.

“You had better be careful,” Sara warns, “or he’ll pull you all the way up that mountain.”

She smirks at Grissom through the darkness, teasing, but he still takes her just a little bit seriously, because he always does. “Yes, dear,” he says, docile. He chokes up on the leash.

Early morning outings like this one are rarities, few and precious because Grissom can’t afford to schedule himself and Sara for too many of the same days off every month. They’ve been secretly dating for nearly two years now, and they’ve gotten the logistics of it down to a science, all carefully choreographed entries and exits, sly innuendos, silences slyer still, tricks of the calendar, Mack and Rock’s principles of inattentional blindness regarding human expectation. To sometimes be able to pack up their car and drive to a mountain, their dog in tow—that’s the payoff for all the nights when one of them has to work and the other stays home, alone through a shift. Sara smiles at Grissom, happy to have this time with him, and he smiles back, happy, too.

They stuff flashlights, water bottles, dog biscuits, and plastic waste-collection bags from the trunk into Sara’s pack before setting off for the trailhead, located a hundred yards past the parking lot. Fletcher Canyon is a four-mile roundtrip hike, and they’ve planned to take the whole trail, all the way to the seasonal waterfall concealed beyond the narrows. They want to watch the sunrise together. They walk close to each other, their elbows brushing, content to keep an easy pace, waiting out the first light over the horizon. There are no other hikers on the trail at this early hour. They have the whole canyon to themselves. The whole mountain, maybe. Rocks and dirt wobble, give way, and clack, loose, beneath their feet, but, otherwise, they make silent progress. For a long while, neither one of them speaks. Then.

“You’re awfully quiet,” Sara says. “Something on your mind?”

 _“Icaricia shasta charlestonensis,”_ Grissom says. “The Mount Charleston Blue Butterfly. It may be going extinct. The Fish and Wildlife Service hasn’t observed any examples of an adult population within the last year. If we see any oxytrope or milkvetch growing along the trail, I’d, uh, like to check it for the presence of larvae.”

Sara frowns. “Is it human activity that’s causing the extinction?” She hates to think that she might inadvertently be contributing to the decline of a whole species just by being on the mountain.

“Indeterminate,” Grissom says. “It could be recreational development in the Spring Mountains, use of fossil fuels, introduction of nonnative plant and wildlife species to the region, extreme drought and wildfire conditions—”

“And this butterfly is only found here?”

“Only here.”

“That’s sad.” A pause. “I’ll keep my eye out for milkvetch.” Her hand slips into Grissom’s free hand, and Grissom gives it a squeeze.

They talk about other things—about Wordsworth and the River Wye and the pollution index of the Salt Lake Valley, the National Parks Service and Teddy Roosevelt and the Monopoly Years of Major League Baseball, their own undersheriff and whether or not Greg Sanders may have seen Sara sifting through some of Grissom’s mail, some of which is also secretly her mail, in Grissom’s office, the other day. Hank noses along as they go, stopping to pee next to this tree and that trail marker.

They come to the first creek bed crossing, and, while Grissom and Sara opt to use the fallen log bridge, wanting to spare their shoes, Hank plunges gamely into the water and barks, splashing against the current. When he emerges from the creek on its opposite bank, his silhouette is darker up the hocks than it was before. He shakes himself dry and Grissom and Sara wet beside him, and they laugh and tell him “God, Hank. Good going, buddy!”

The sun still has yet to rise, though the sky has begun to lighten from black to purple, like ink bleeding through soaked paper. They’re about a mile in, not yet confined to the narrows but soon to be. Birds warble their first tentative songs from the trees, and Hank listens intently and sniffs the air. They pause to drink from their water bottles before taking the next stretch of the trail, and that’s when it happens: Hank lets out a desperate, keening whine and strains, hard, against his leash, tugging Grissom off balance.

“Hey!” Sara says warningly. “Hank, buddy, where’s the fire?”

Grissom regains his footing and chokes up on the leash, but Hank still surges forward, his snout working vigorously to catch some scent, his whole body pointing away from the trail. He is usually a very well-behaved dog, content to follow where his humans lead him.

“Hank, no!” Grissom says, redirecting him. Hank pulls and whimpers, and Grissom and Sara share a look. There has to be chipmunk or a jackrabbit somewhere beyond their sight. Hank wants to chase it—that must be it. Grissom gives the leash another tug, careful but firm. “No, Hank. Come on. Let’s go.”

Hank moves as if to follow Grissom’s direction, but when Grissom shifts his weight to allow Hank past him, Hank suddenly veers away and makes his break. The leash handle wrenches out of Grissom’s grasp and retracts with a snap, pulling close to Hank’s body. Sara lets out a surprised yelp and tries to grab for either the leash or the dog, but it’s too late: Hank is a blur through the brush, yards away before either she or Grissom can do anything about it. Hank barks, and both of his humans take off chasing him. He has never tried to run from either one of them before.

Catching a healthy boxer dog with a mind to run free would prove a difficult task even on the smoothest pavement, but it is next to impossible on uneven mountain terrain, with brambles, shrubs, and jagged stones leaping out to attack unwary ankles and shins through the dark. Hank soon disappears from sight, but his idiot bark booms from somewhere up ahead. Grissom and Sara follow the sound as quickly as they’re able to, trundling over fallen logs and scurrying down inclines, their footing tenuous. The trail is far behind them now.

“Hank!” Grissom calls.

Sara worries that should the dog race out of earshot, they’ll lose him entirely.

A succession of barks: this one further up ahead, another further still, and then no more forward progress. Silence. Grissom and Sara see Hank once they round the next tree. He’s just downhill, and he’s stopped running, come up against the lip of a low, rocky gully. Grissom flanks the gully on one side, Sara on the other, both of them still shocked by Hank’s short, strange bid to lose them. Hank whines and dances on the spot, his nose still working hard against some scent. He glances between his humans and the gully, nervous.

Sara is on the side of the gully where he stands. “What is going on with y—?” she starts to say, snatching up the handle to Hank’s leash and pulling it in close to her. But then she sees, and Grissom does, too.

They’re not alone.

Two persons, one tall and one short, lay side-by-side halfway down the gully, their forms partially concealed by scrub brush and low-hanging wax currant branches. They hold hands, the shorter person’s head close to but not resting on the taller person’s shoulder. They could be campers who had fallen asleep under the stars.

—except that they have no sleeping bags, and except that their clothes are in tatters, and except that their mouths are gaping, stretched into long-toothed, long-O voiceless screams, their eyes punched out as if by a perforator, their skin leathered and bodies desiccated, skinnied down to twigs.

—except, except that they’re dead.

A rusted-over Berretta pistol lies beside the taller victim.

Sara immediately double-twists the leash around both of her hands, taking Hank to heel to prevent him from storming the gully, but it’s a moot precaution. Now that he’s shown his humans what he smelled on the wind, he seems willing to submit to them, though his body remains tense and on alert.

“Oh my god,” Sara says.

Who are the dead people, and how did they get here? How long have they been in the gully? They appear mummified, perhaps by the elements. But did they die here on the mountain, or were they moved here from someplace else? Were their deaths natural—a camping accident, maybe—or no? Why is one of them lying beside a gun?

Sara fixates on their skeletal hands, clasped together between them. Numbers and equations gather in her mind like a storm. What is the probability that she and Grissom would happen upon two d.b.s on their day off—that they, of all the hikers to visit Fletcher Canyon for as long as the bodies have been here, likely the only two crime scene investigators here today and the only two crime scene investigators for miles, would be the ones—that their dog, of all dogs, would sniff out the scene?

Sara knows that there were about two million deaths in the U.S. last year, in 2006, though not every death resulted in someone discovering a body. Say somewhere around one-eighth of the deaths resulted in someone discovering a body. That’s still two-hundred and fifty thousand bodies discovered in 2006 alone. With about two-hundred and ninety-eight million people in the U.S. in 2006, that means that .084% of the total U.S. population discovered a body during the course of the year.

The figures aren’t in for 2007 yet, not when it’s only March, but say that the .084% holds steady. Sara is now a part of that statistic, and that’s a rare enough thing in itself without taking into account the unlikelihood of any one person who discovers a body at random having a career as a crime scene investigator, let alone any two people having careers as crime scene investigators doing so together, let alone one of those two people being one of the most highly esteemed supervising crime scene investigators at the most prestigious crime lab in the country and the other one being a senior member of his team and the both of them making the discovery on their day off, which is one of the few days a year when they don’t plan to encounter any dead bodies at all—

Sara looks to Grissom, wanting confirmation that he sees what she sees and shares in her astonishment. They face each other from across the gully, and even though his features aren’t entirely clear to her through the darkness, she knows that he can feel it, too—the surreal quality of the moment. For a long while, they’re silent. Then.

“Milkvetch,” he says.

“What?” says Sara.

“Milkvetch,” he says, gesturing downward.

Above the bodies: a ground-crawling herb, its trumpet flowers from the year before dried out and standing guard over its new year buds, its roots curled over the edge of the gully, clinging against gravity.

“Not exactly butterflies,” she says.

“No,” Grissom agrees.

And here is the difficult part in having a secret relationship.

They’re going to need to call in what they’ve found, but they can’t be together by the time the first responders arrive. It’s too risky with all the cops and EMTs they call friends, and especially considering that it will be their team called in to process the scene and work the case. Since there is no plausible explanation for why they would be together in the canyon at five o’clock in the morning except for the truth—that they’re in love, that they’re in a relationship, that they live together, that they spend all their shared days off together, that they were taking their dog on a walk—one of them is going to have to leave, and damn it if they didn’t drive up here in the same car.

All of these considerations they make in silence, both of them accustomed to the strange intricacies of their situation—of hiding their relationship from their trained observer coworkers, for the most part in plain sight.

“It should be me who goes,” Sara says, after a minute. “I mean, it makes sense that you would be here, hiking with Hank.”

“We’ll have to call you a cab,” Grissom concurs.

“I can go home, change, and then drive back here in my own car.”

“We should call the cab now. It will take about a half-hour for it to get here from downtown, then another half-hour to get you home, then, what? Another hour, at least, before you can change and get back here? By then, day shift will technically have started. We could just leave you off of this case. You’re not scheduled to come in again until tonight.”

Sara shakes her head. “Oh, no, I want on,” she says. She gives Hank’s leash a tug and starts to walk toward Grissom, meeting up with him where the gully bottoms out into flatted ground. She hands the lead over, but Hank remains by her side, waiting. She smirks at Grissom. “You know,” she says, “an hour’s worth of taxi service isn’t going to be cheap. Think I could get my supervisor to comp it for me? It is a work expense.”

Grissom offers her a wry smile but doesn’t reply. They’re standing so close together now that Sara feels it when heat blooms over his skin. She never used to know how much her flirting flustered him, but now, after over a year spent living with him, she does. She watches him dig in his pocket for his phone. Her eyes never leave him as he searches out a number for the taxi service in his contacts—a relic from the days when he had no one to drive him to and pick him up from the airport when he attended conferences. Heat lingers between them, despite the coolness of the morning, despite the fact that the sun still has yet to rise, despite where they are and what they’re doing. Grissom speaks in his polite phone voice, directing the dispatcher where the cab should go and telling him whom it will be for. For a second, the dispatcher puts Grissom on hold, and Grissom looks back to Sara, meeting her eyes again. More heat.

“Thank you,” Grissom says as the dispatcher comes back on the line. “Yes, she’ll be waiting in the parking lot by the trailhead.” He ends the call and gives Sara a pointed look. “The cab company says they’ll have someone here for you in thirty minutes, so you had better start hiking, my dear.”

“So much for seeing the waterfall,” Sara says. She leans down to give Hank a scratch by the ears. “Sorry, buddy,” she tells him. “Maybe next time.” The inclination of the terrain necessitates that she stand on tiptoe to give her next goodbye: a kiss pressed to the corner of Grissom’s mouth. “I’ll see you back here,” she says. Then, a better kiss, more fully on the mouth, Grissom kissing back this time.

“We’ll miss you,” Grissom mumbles, and now it’s her turn to bloom with heat.

She wants to say something more, but she doesn't know how to, without a particular occasion—not beneath an open sky, not when they're caught up in something else. She glances away from him, unsure.

They make the necessary exchanges, Sara fishing in the backpack for her house keys and wallet before handing the backpack itself over to Grissom, leaving him with the hiking supplies and dog care provisions for Hank. Grissom says Sara might want to take a flashlight, so she takes a flashlight. A few more _See you soons_ and then Sara hikes back up toward the trail. Hank whines to see her go, and she hears Grissom placing his call to P.D. Again, it strikes her how surreal her life is sometimes—all the things she does on any given day that other people don’t do in a lifetime. She smirks as she finds the trail again. Can’t afford to keep the cab waiting.

She switches on the flashlight and runs.

• • •

After placing the call to dispatch, Grissom tethers Hank’s leash to the trunk of a nearby aspen, far enough away from the gully to keep Hank from disrupting the scene but close enough to let him know that he isn’t being punished or sent away. The first hints of true twilight have begun to creep around the eastern edge of the canyon, and Grissom makes use of the increased visibility, surveying the bodies in the gully as the morning light slowly reveals their finer details.

Grissom wishes that Sara were still with him, not only because he wants for her observations and candor but also because he wants for _her_ in a more basic, yearning way. The mountainside is lonely in her absence, quieter, harsher, and more impossibly solitary. Before Grissom met Sara, he never thought he had been lonely in his life, but now he knows that he had always been lonely, and she was the one who rescued him. Back then, he tamped the feeling down, ignoring it like an early hunger. He didn’t want to believe he needed anyone. And maybe he was right in most cases, but not with her.

Knowing now how it can be having a companion—having _Sara_ —so often with him, he realizes that he doesn’t actually like to be alone. He misses her keenly when she’s gone, her laughter and wit and thriving heat. Something deep inside him always reaches for her, and it doesn’t want to have to reach so far. She’ll be back in two hours, but two hours can be a long time. Hank whines from his spot near the tree, and Grissom commiserates.

Peering over the edge of the gully, Grissom sees that the bodies bear evidence of weather damage, a development which suggests that they may have been on the mountainside for some time. Since neither victim’s body shows the usual signs of insect activity, he wonders if they were perhaps killed or dumped on the mountainside in wintertime. No animals appear to have scavenged them, so maybe the gully offered some concealment? Grissom can imagine a scenario in which the bodies lay beneath a blanket fallen snow for many weeks, only to be revealed by the recent springtime thaw. Fresh exposure could have potentially restarted the decomposition process, which might explain why Hank was able to smell the bodies from the trail.

Such a chain of events might also explain the bodies’ poor condition. They are mummified and shabby, dressed in moldering jeans, t-shirts, and tennis shoes, the skulls traumatized—one stellate hole apiece, though in different positions between the two, the shorter victim’s above the left ear, the taller victim’s above the left temple. The holes resemble gunshot wounds, though Grissom knows better than to say for certain that that is what they are; Doc Robbins will have to confirm with the post.

The shorter victim’s dress and pelvic width suggest femaleness, the taller victim’s suggest maleness. A rusted Berretta M9 pistol lies beside the male victim’s left hand. Did he use it to kill himself and the female victim, murder-suicide; did she kill herself with it and him follow after, double-suicide; or did he wield it in an unsuccessful attempt to defend himself and the female victim against an attacker, double-homicide? Grissom’s first blush says murder-suicide or double-suicide, but he can’t rule out the possibility of a homicide or even accidental death for certain.

Due to their advanced state of decay, Grissom cannot guess the victims’ ages, except to say that neither one of them is a young child. Instead, he focuses on what the location of their bodies might tell him about the circumstances surrounding their deaths. The gully is far enough away from the main trail so as to be attractive to both suicides and murderers, though it is not far enough away from the main trail to be unattractive to a body dumper. Fletcher Canyon is not the most popular trail on Mount Charleston, though it does see fairly consistent traffic. Ignoring the possibility of accident for the moment, if the victims were murdered on the mountain or dumped on it after being murdered, it would have had to have been at a time when the trail was empty, or else someone might have witnessed the crime in commission. After sundown but before sunrise? During the off-season for hiking? Grissom will have to put one of his people on talking to a park ranger. He needs to know how often the area is patrolled and whether or not any park employees have noted unusual happenings in the canyon.    

Moving around the gully, he examines the bodies from uphill and downhill angles, from both sides, and standing up and crouching down. It puzzles him that the victims are holding hands—and particularly that the male victim’s right hand clasps the female victim’s left, while the gun lies on his other side. He wonders about positioning and laterality. He wonders about proximity. He wonders what it would be like to die holding hands with another human being.

He puzzles and wonders for an hour, eventually taking a seat on a rock beside Hank’s aspen tree. He feeds Hank a Milk-bone from the backpack and himself drinks some water. He imagines that Sara is back in the city.

By now, the sun has fully risen, and the light over the mountain is a sharp, incisive white. His phone buzzes with a text message—Nick announcing his and Greg’s arrival at the canyon and asking for a rendezvous by the creek bed because they don’t know the way to the scene past that point. Grissom untethers Hank’s leash from the tree and takes one last look at the bodies in the gully. He prepares for the inevitable rush.

He finds Nick and Greg waiting for him by the creek, along with a uniformed police officer called Mitchell. While Officer Mitchell looks fresh, Nick and Greg both seem a bit bleary-eyed, and Grissom knows that they are so because they had been just about to finish their previous shift when he called in the 419s today, suddenly putting them onto a double whether they wanted to be on one or not. Technically, he could have asked the day shift to cover this case, but he wanted his guys on it. They’re the ones he trusts.

“Sir,” says Officer Mitchell, giving Grissom a brisk nod.

“So you go looking for bodies even on days when you’re _not_ working?” Greg asks Grissom, incredulous, squinting at him against the light.

“I didn’t know you had a dog,” Nick says, crouching to give Hank an ear-scratch.

“Come on,” says Grissom. He wants his guys and their kits in the gully as soon as possible. “We’ll start on the perimeter until the coroner gets here. Do we have an E.T.A.?”

Officer Mitchell shrugs, but Nick and Greg share a quick look, registering Grissom’s brusqueness between them. Grissom allows it. Once he starts on a case, he is compelled to see it through to a solution as quickly as possible. Some part of him would feel remiss to wait any longer than he already has in getting to work. He came to the mountain unaware that there were bodies to be found, and he doesn’t want to leave it without knowing something concrete about them now that he has found them.

He leads Nick, Greg, and Officer Mitchell off-trail and down the mountainside to where the gully lies. Nick and Greg mumble at his heels that it’s going to be a bitch for the coroner’s office to pick up the bodies, given the terrain. Hank immediately starts barking when they come to within view of the scene, raising an alert to the humans that they should take notice of what lies ahead. Grissom quickly tethers his leash to the aspen again while Officer Mitchell scopes out a core area. Nick and Greg take their first looks over the lip of the gully.

“Super Dave was on a pickup in Pahrump, so he might not be here for a while,” Nick says, answering the question Grissom asked at the creek bed.

Grissom nods. “Until he gets here, I want Greg taking overalls and details on everything. Nick, I want you to make sketches and talk to the ranger. Do we have an E.T.A. on them?”

“Detective Curtis was right behind us,” Greg says. “She was going to meet the Parks Service rep at the trailhead.”

“Good,” says Grissom. “I’m going to start collecting plant and soil exemplars.” A pause. “Greg, I’m, uh, going to need to borrow your collection jars.”

And so the scene unfolds. Officer Mitchell surrounds the core area with yellow tape, using nearby trees to form a perimeter around the gully and its neighboring terrain. Nick and Greg walk the area once, twice, three times in an outward spiral pattern. They start to make observations—that the rocky soil doesn’t seem to capture footprints, though the sedimentary walls exposed in the gully reveal some top-layer saturation, suggesting recent rainfall in the area, which may have exposed the bodies after they had been otherwise concealed by brush and overgrowth.

Greg flashes hundreds of photographs of trees and rocks and scrubby milkvetch and leans over the bodies to capture their details, careful not to touch them until David Phillips can arrive. Soon Sofia radios Officer Mitchell, wanting directions from the creek, and Nick goes up to meet her. They return with a ranger in tow, and there are introductions made and an interview and expert opinion given. Greg opens up his kit and offers his collection jars to Grissom.

The sun rises ever higher along the eastern edge of the mountain, and the light softens and disperses, becoming less and less intrusive. Each action contributes to the sense of well-organized chaos, to a clockwork with so many machinations as to baffle from an outside perspective.

All the while, Grissom keeps internal time, waiting past seven o’clock and seven-thirty, imagining Sara alone in their condo, readying for the investigation, returning in her own vehicle to the mountain, prepared to insinuate that she hadn’t been there before. He sees her clearly in his mind’s eye, as if he were watching a film. She is on the highway with her window rolled down, and she’ll find him again soon.  

• • •

The driver doesn’t ask why Sara needs a pickup from Fletcher Canyon at six o’clock in the morning, but she can tell he wants to. He stares at her in the rearview mirror, and she guesses that he wonders why she seems dressed for a hike but has no hiking apparel with her—no backpack, sleeping roll, or even a water bottle to speak of. He probably also wonders why she is alone and why she needed him to drive her into the city when she was with another person who called in for the ride. Didn’t either of them have a car? Why didn’t they leave the mountain together? Sara feels self-conscious under his attention and turns toward the window, focusing on the scenery, the landscape flattening out before her, the mountains melding into desert, the greenery dulling into dun. She waits to see the city, and when the first casino spires rise over the horizon to greet her, her chest floods with relief.

Soon enough, the driver has her back to her building, to the condo in West Sahara that she and Grissom have shared for more than a year now. They chose their home strategically—close enough to the lab to be convenient but far enough away to afford them their privacy. Their neighbors are mostly retirees, their neighborhood itself low-crime. While the occasional uni patrols their street, they’re unlikely to encounter any detectives there, and certainly no C.S.I.s. On the weekends, there is a farmer’s market in the bank parking lot next door, and there is a dog park for Hank within walking distance just around the block. They’re considered the young couple on their floor, which is strange but also strangely nice. In some ways, it feels like another world, completely insulated from their working lives.

It takes effort to keep things that way, though. Sara still pays rent on her old rat hole off East Bonanza because she needs a cover—a different address than the one she shares with Grissom to list on her personnel and W-2 forms. They never have any of their coworkers over between shifts, and they stagger their comings to and goings from the lab just to be safe. Sometimes Sara feels like a secret agent, leading a doubled existence, but abiding the weirdness and intricacy is worth it to her, as long as she can live with Grissom. There is such a difference between having a house and having a home.

Even now, with Grissom and Hank back on the mountain, Sara doesn’t feel alone. There is evidence of them, of her family, all over the condo: a pair of Grissom’s work shoes neatly arranged next to her messy, kicked-off sneakers beside the front door; a half-finished crossword puzzle in two different colors of ink and both their handwritings, waiting for completion on the living room coffee table; a sticky note reminder to buy dog food pinned to the kitchen fridge with a UC Berkeley magnet; a dog toy obstacle course leading into the bedroom, where the bed remains unmade after her and Grissom’s last night spent in. There are photographs and bric-a-bracs, all their material things, sharing space. But more than that, a knowing that wherever she goes, they go, too, like the lines from that Cummings poem:

 _"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in_  
_my heart)"_

She undresses in the bedroom and then heads to the bathroom to shower away the mountain grime and sweat from her run to meet the taxi. She redresses, fetches the mail, and then eats breakfast in the kitchen, reading over one of Grissom’s old collegiate copies of Emerson as she savors her toast. She tries to decipher the notes he has written in the margins. His cursive from thirty years ago is less-practiced than his cursive of today but still familiar. Even in shorthand, he has beautiful thoughts.

Sara feels anxious to return to the crime scene, but she tempers herself, knowing that she needs to play her part. It’s supposed to be her day off, and she has to make it look to everyone like she wasn’t expecting a call-in.

She and Grissom have a rule that they try to avoid outright lying to their teammates, when they can. They favor omission over deception, passively allowing mistaken conclusions to form over actively promulgating them. No broadcasting that they’re dating other people to hide that they’re dating each other. No pretending to be in loathing when they are in love. They don’t act any different in each other’s presence when they are with their teammates than they would in any other public situation. They are still kind to each other, still obviously interested, still prone to slip in little endearments. Their only refrainment is physical: no holding hands, no embraces, no kissing. But that’s mostly out of politeness. They still stand impossibly close to each other and very much share space.

Being so open has its risks, but their consciences won’t allow anything else. It’s bad enough lying to their friends by omission. It would be worse to lie to them directly, and particularly when they respect their friends so much. They decided from the get-go that if anyone ever confronted them with the truth, they would admit to it—but so far no one ever has. For two years, they’ve conducted their relationship quietly though in plain sight, and none of their teammates has realized the subtle shift between how they used to be, during those first few years when Sara moved to Vegas, and how they are now. It’s all about timing and what’s not being said. Sometimes people fail to notice what remains constant day by day.

Once ready, Sara dons her vest and gathers her field kit and a thermos of coffee and drives back to the mountain. By now the sun is climbing in the sky, casting gas puddle mirages along the flat stretches of I-15, despite the coolness of the day. When she pulls into the parking lot at Fletcher Canyon, she sees three squad cars and Sofia Curtis’s unmarked sedan alongside a C.S.I. Denali, Grissom’s car, and a U.S. Forest Service jeep. No van from the Coroner’s Office, though—meaning that Super Dave has either already come and gone or not yet arrived on the scene. She takes her thermos from the cup-holder and rustles her field kit out of the trunk.

 _Show time_ , she thinks, starting off for the trail.

Two officers stand posted at the trailhead. They greet her and make a cursory check of her i.d., though they both recognize her by sight. “Your guys are up there,” one of them says, gesturing vaguely to the canyon. “I heard they got mummies.” Sara nods, acknowledging him, but doesn’t say anything, as she has already seen the mummies for herself. She takes the trail as quickly as possible without running and makes it to the creek bed in twenty minutes. There is another officer posted at the spot where Hank first veered into the brush, headed toward the crime scene. She tells Sara it’s already a circus down there, as if Sara wouldn’t have known.

So many people have traversed the mountainside down to the crime scene that by now there is a distinct trail through the grass leading to the gully. Sara follows it and soon catches sight of the promised circus. She sets down her kit and her thermos atop it, surveying the chaos: a U.S. Forest Service ranger clad in khaki and green gesturing out a story to Sofia just beyond the yellow tape; three officers, including Larry, triangulated around the core area, clutching their belts as they perform their tedious watch duties; Nick crouched at the lip of the gully, sketchpad and pencil in hand, his tongue poking between his teeth as he concentrates on recreating the scene in his notes; Greg hovering just above the shorter victim’s head, the lens of his camera as close as it can be to the skull without touching it as he snaps photos; Grissom standing off to the side, holding Hank’s leash; and Hank—

—barking his full head off, suddenly in a frenzy, straining away from Grissom towards Sara as she approaches the scene.

He wears an open-mouthed doggy smile and bounds forward, dragging Grissom after him. And then for the second time in the day, he slips free, launching himself at Sara with his paws outstretched, keening, whining, frenetic and joyous to see her, as if she had been gone for years instead of just for hours. He nearly bowls her over, his nose and paws impacting her torso. It’s all his tongue hot on her cheeks and arms, his wet face against her ears, her laughing and him snuffling, his tail wagging as if motorized, Grissom saying “Hey! Hey!” and trying to regain control of the leash, everyone at the crime scene witnessing this hectic, exuberant welcome, undoubtedly shocked. Hank jumps up and down, wanting Sara to pet him, and she does, on his jowls and ears, laughing, full, from the back of her throat.

“Well, hello to you, too!” she says just as Grissom manages to grab him by the collar, yanking him down and off of her.

“Sorry,” Grissom says, and to everyone else it probably sounds like him apologizing for his dog’s impropriety, but to Sara it sounds like him fretting that their dog might somehow blow their cover to their coworkers.

Nick stands up along the edge of the gully and squints from under the brim of his ball cap. He whistles a long, Texas whistle. “Wow,” he says to Grissom, “your dog sure likes Sara!”

Grissom responds immediately: “He has good taste.”

Heat blooms over Sara’s skin both for the artlessness of his compliment and the recklessness of it. She checks faces: Nick’s confused frown, Greg’s uncertain flinch, Sofia’s scowl for coming into the conversation too late to understand anything except that something awkward has just happened, the ranger blank and oblivious, the officers far enough out of earshot so as not to matter. She makes the briefest eye contact with Grissom. If he’s not careful, it won’t be their dog that blows their cover—and yet she wouldn’t have him take back what he said. She adores these little instances of plain, straightforward feeling, of Grissom’s thoughts and heart and words all aligning perfectly. His eyes are very blue, and he seems sheepish but unsorry. He wouldn’t take back what he said, either. He meant it, and it matters.

Before anyone can make a comment, Dave Phillips and his assistant are coming down the hill, carrying a backboard stretched between them. “Sorry I’m late!” Dave says. “The traffic from Pahrump was bad, coming into the city—”

Grissom looks to Sara, suddenly all business again. “You and Greg process the bodies once he clears them,” he says, giving a nod towards Dave. Then louder, to everyone, “I’m going to get Hank to the sitter’s. I’ll meet you back at the lab.”

Sara watches him gather the backpack, Hank’s leash, and a tray of filled collection jars before heading up the hillside. She feels him ascending the trail behind her, though she can no longer see him, his heat and presence leaving. It’s like the Cummings poem over again, always—she carries his heart in her heart. She feels him, even in his absence.


	2. Chapter 2

**March 2nd, 2007**

Grissom mostly wants to change his socks, but, since he has to stop at home to gather Hank’s things anyway, he opts to shower and put on new clothes, as well. His compulsion to work the case tempts him to skip out on breakfast, but his experience reminds him that he ought to eat now, while he has the chance, before the case gathers too much momentum, and he heeds the better impulse.

When he sits down to his cornflakes at the bar in the kitchen, he finds a folded-over newspaper waiting for him, crossword-puzzle face up. Sara has filled in five more answers since last he worked it. She has left the last six odd numbers Down for him and written a note in the blank space below the clues: “Don’t forget to bring new box of chews to s.’s for H.”

The dog sitters at the twenty-four hour doggy daycare know that Grissom and Sara don’t usually work afternoons. Must be a big case, they guess. They tell Hank that it’s okay—they’ll have fun here. They talk to him as if he were a child they adored, and it’s different than how Sara talks to him, as if he were a friend to whom she owes explanations. Grissom never used to talk to Hank when it was just the two of them alone, aside from to give him short directions, but now sometimes he does say things, and, because Sara has convinced him so, he feels like Hank understands him.

“We’ll see you later, Dr. Grissom,” the sitters say. “Er, maybe Sara?”

“I’m not sure,” Grissom tells them because he and Sara haven’t discussed it yet. Considering that no one on his team has called him with an i.d. on the victims since he left the mountain, he tends to believe that it will be a very long time before either he or Sara can think about picking up Hank at all.

“Say goodbye,” the sitters prompt Hank, though they are already leading him to the play area beyond the check-in desk.

Grissom leaves the new box of chews on the counter for them. “Bye, bud,” he says to Hank.

He arrives at the lab just a little after ten and sends out a group text to Nick, Greg, and Sara, telling them to meet him in the break room for a status report, ten minutes. Catherine and Warrick won’t be in until start of shift come nighttime, so for now it’s just the four of them. Greg sends a quick text, saying he is still in Autopsy, processing the bodies. _Good. Stay on it_ , Grissom texts him back. Nick emerges from Ballistics, carrying a folder. He flanks Grissom in the hall.

“Hank miss me yet?” he asks, grinning though his eyes look tired.

Grissom ignores his joke, scanning, scanning—

—but Sara comes up from behind, and Grissom doesn’t see her until she’s touching him. She brushes against his body as they enter the break room at the same time, her fingertips ghosting over the small of his back, briefly, inconspicuously, a seemingly incidental contact if it an outside party were to observe it, but something that is, to Grissom, purposeful and intimate. He sits down at the head of the conference table, and she at his right hand, and Nick at his left. While Nick shuffles with his folder, Grissom and Sara’s eyes meet, and they communicate, silently, about the dog and the case and the strangeness of their day.

“Super Dave didn’t find any i.d. on either of the bodies,” Nick says. “No wallets, nothing. Sofia and I talked to the ranger, and there’ve been no reports of suspicious activity in the canyon lately and no unaccounted for lost or missing campers or hikers known to have been in the area—so no i.d. on the victims there, either. The ranger said he and his crew have upped their patrols lately, looking for fire hazards since it’s been a dry winter. I think it’s a little bit of a pride thing, but he’s convinced it would be pretty difficult for somebody to shoot off an M9 so close to the trail without the Parks Service knowing about it.”

“And what about the M9?” Grissom asks. “Were you able to run the serial number?”

Nick nods. “It belonged to Private First Class Caleb Blanchett, U.S. Army. It was his service pistol during the Gulf War. I looked him up, and he died in 2001 of an overdose on pharmaceutical pills and is buried in Southern Nevada Veteran’s Memorial, so he’s not our male vic.”

“So are there any records of what became of his gun when he died?” Sara asks, a half-second ahead of Grissom with the question.

Nick shakes his head. “No resale or new registration records,” he says, reading from the notes in his folder, “but, according to his obituary, Private Blanchett was a widower, and he had a son who was eighteen years old at the time when he died. Kid’s name is James Blanchett. Er, Jimmy, it says here. I’m thinking he may have inherited the piece from his old man. I couldn’t find a phone number for him, but I got a last known address off his D.M.V. records. Says he lives on Owens Avenue.”

“Good,” Grissom says, pleased with the lead. “Go, and take Sofia with you.” Then, turning to Sara. “And—?”

“I processed the victims’ clothing,” she says, “and the male vic was wearing a pair of DC Clientele Remix skateboarding sneakers?” Her voice lilts up in a slight question at the unfamiliar brand name. “That particular make of shoe didn’t hit the market until 2004, which means that the bodies can’t have been on that mountain for any longer than three years. I also found a dark, oily residue on the back pockets of the male vic’s jeans. I sent it to Trace, but it’s not back yet because—”

“Day shift tech,” Grissom infers. He sighs. Unlike Hodges, the day shift tech is almost painfully slow at running the GCMS. It will be a while before Sara gets her results back, then. “Okay, while you’re waiting, I want you with me on the missing persons database. The ranger said there were no unaccounted for hikers, but that doesn’t mean there are no unaccounted for Las Vegas residents.”

Nick starts to rise from his chair, peeling his folder up off the table. He gestures toward the door. “I’m gonna head to P.D. to find Sofia,” he says, excusing himself, and Grissom nods, granting him leave.

Grissom and Sara remain in the break room, and Sara bites back a grin, staring at Grissom from across the table. She quirks an eyebrow at him. There’s something smug—no, pleased—in her expression, like she’s won a prize without even entering a contest for it. She knows that searching a database doesn’t have to be a two person job and that Grissom just wants an excuse for them to spend more time together. He might be able to keep his wanting for her a secret from the rest of the world but never from Sara herself. She has always been able to solve his puzzles, sometimes even before he does.

“Shall we?” she says, starting to rise from her place.

“Of course,” he says, following. He holds the door for her as they exit the room and flanks her down the hall toward the computer lab in AV.

The day shift tech isn’t present, so they have the space to themselves. What they don’t have is much information to plug into their search, as Doc has yet to complete the post. They know the victims’ approximate ages, their sexes, heights, and what clothing they were wearing at the time of their deaths, and they also know to limit the timeframe for their search to the last three years. But they won’t be able to specify any of the victims’ defining characteristics, like birthmarks or scars or tattoos, or what the victims’ races were, the color of their hair and eyes, their dental topography, and whether or not they have any surgical appliances inside them. At this point, they can’t even be sure that the victims are Las Vegas locals or even Nevada residents. They could be dealing with tourists, and, if so, then they’ll be out of luck.

Clark County has maintained its own database of information regarding missing persons cases and the unidentified dead since 2003, but it contains only localized references. The National Institute of Justice recently began compiling a national database, but they say it won’t be operational until summertime—and, even then, it will be in its beta phases for testing. So unless the victims from the mountain were reported missing from somewhere in Nevada, Grissom and Sara won’t turn up any results on them.

Still, Grissom considers the effort required to run at least a preliminary query through the system worth it, as sometimes even the vaguest search terms result in a longshot positive hit.

Sara sits down at the computer, and Grissom perches at her shoulder, close, one hand on the back of her chair, his thumb touching her shoulder. It is another seemingly inconspicuous contact—something that their coworkers might overlook—but one which both of them feel keenly and know is meaningful. As Sara logs onto the system, Grissom breathes in her scent, the fresh shampoo from her shower after the mountain and underlying base notes of her skin. The screen displays search bars and limiting options.

“Let’s keep it between 2004 and present,” Sara mumbles, selecting the date range from a drop-down menu, “and say that the victims were probably adolescents or adults, based on height and clothing. Male vic had on baggy jeans and skateboarding shoes, so I’m guessing he’s in his teens or twenties. Female vic is probably about the same, considering she was wearing a, um, Foo Fighters t-shirt.”

Grissom immediately thinks of WWII and raises an eyebrow, curious. “Foo Fighters?” he repeats.

Either the question or his inflection must strike Sara as funny—or both—because she dissolves into giggles, grinning so widely her dimples show. When Grissom meets her eyes, silently asking her to explain the joke, she laughs again and covers her mouth with her hand, delighted and bashful about it. Grissom doesn’t know whether to focus on the brightness of her eyes or the happiness in her voice or the small, incommunicable perfection of her gesture. There’s too much with her that’s too sweet, and a strain plays through his chest, almost like an ache but pleasant.

He used to think of love in terms of its science: of the biological imperative to perpetuate the species; of activated neurotransmitters, raised internal temperature and dilated blood vessels, a rush of norepinephrine causing increased heartrate, a release of pheromones, with dopamine and serotonin in abundance—even inhibited digestive processes causing the temporary sensation of butterflies in the stomach. But now he knows from personal experience that love exceeds its science, that it is more than just its chemical reactions. It is ineffable and expansive, and he could never fully explain it speaking solely of physiology.

When he listens to Sara laugh, he doesn’t think, just feels.

They spend the next two hours in AV, and the database kicks out twenty-three partial matches but no full ones. They have to read through each result individually, seeing if it warrants consideration. Some they can rule out right away due to specific eliminating details mentioned in the case files. Others prompt phone calls to police chiefs and medical examiners in far-flung corners of the state. They receive faxed documents from counties Mineral, Elko, and Washoe, including dental records for comparison and detailed case histories. Many of the potential victims are listed as teenage runaways and UNLV dropouts who disappeared following a semester or two at school. They end up weeding out eighteen of their twenty-three search results altogether. The five remaining candidates are all possible though not likely.

“Well,” Sara says, adding a final folder to their pile, “one of us should probably bring these down to Doc Robbins. He should be about finished with the post by now.”

Grissom is about to offer to head to Autopsy himself when his phone buzzes—caller i.d. Nick Stokes. He answers.

“Griss,” Nick says, and Grissom hears outdoor sounds behind him, the low purr of motors and whisk of wind, distant voices and city babble. “I think we might’ve found our missing persons. Get this: The landlady at the apartment, Mrs. Dominguez, says that the last time she saw Jimmy and his girlfriend, Coby Ohte, was around January of this year, and after that they vanished—didn’t even move their stuff out of their apartment or close out their lease or anything. She, uh, hasn’t been able to clear the place out yet ‘cause she can’t afford movers, so she let us in there, showed us around. Doesn’t look like anybody’s been in there for months. Nothing’s out of place, no sign of struggle. Mrs. Dominguez says that Jimmy and Coby had a string of bad luck. They had a baby who was born premature, died in the hospital, Desert Palm, and then both of them lost their jobs. Jimmy helped her with chores around the complex to cover rent. Real nice kid, all of that. When he and Coby disappeared, Mrs. Dominguez figured they’d just gone home to Coby’s family. Sofia checked, and no one’s filed a missing persons report on ‘em, but she found that Jimmy had a B&E charge back when he was eighteen, so he’s got prints on file. I figured we could check them against the male vic’s body and then follow up with Coby’s family—Mrs. Dominguez thinks they live in Moapa.”

Sara is close enough to Grissom that she overhears everything Nick says through the receiver. She and Grissom share a look. It’s a good lead, better than what they’ve had so far.

“Okay, Nicky,” Grissom says. “You finish up and get back here. I’m gonna send Sara”—he looks to her for confirmation that she is ready for another assignment—“out with Brass, see if they can get in contact with Coby Ohte’s family in Moapa.”

“Where’re you headed?” Nick asks.

“Autopsy,” Grissom says. “I’ll see if we can match Jimmy Blanchett’s fingerprints to our vic.”

• • • 

Deb Ohte’s children are all close in age, the eldest probably no older than eleven or twelve, the youngest somewhere around three. There are four of them, and, despite their mother’s pleas that they be quiet, they shriek and clatter through the trailer house, chasing two fat mutt dogs around the rickety kitchen table. The children are all biological siblings, and Ms. Ohte is their birth mother, but their presence makes Sara think _foster home_ —foster home, with so many living all under one roof; foster home, with everyone dressed in bargain-bin clothes; foster home, with that unmistakable smell of recycled toys and cheap fruit punch hanging, stale, in the air.

There was one home specifically, on the outskirts of San Rafael. It had the same carpet as this house does, the color of burnt plastic, and the same smiling, ceramic figurines arranged in a glass case in the corner of the sitting room. Same layout. Sara has never told Grissom about it because the placement wasn’t very memorable. It wasn’t even so bad, as far as foster homes go. The family was decent. The dogs were friendly. If not for its similarity to this house, she might never have thought of it again. She was only there about a month.

She has told Grissom about other homes, about some bad ones and some good ones, usually while they lie in bed together, his lips pressed against her hair in one soothing, prolonged kiss. Back when she first revealed the truth about her childhood to him, he held her hand, and he’s done so every time since. Breath against the crown of her head, fingers laced through hers. Whether it is a bad story or a good one. Whether she is crying or not. Now she rubs her fingertips against the bulb of her thumb, missing him.

She allows Brass to do most of the talking while she sinks into the moldy couch. He sits by her side, while Officer Metcalf stands watch by the front door to the trailer, and Ms. Ohte occupies a Barcalounger opposite the coffee table. The children stop their clattering around the table to get themselves some orange Kool-Aid out of the fridge, and, while they’re occupied, the dogs come into the sitting room and sniff at Sara’s knees and the cuffs of her pants, detecting Hank’s scent on her clothes, but she’s too distracted by the house to pet them.

“Take them outside!” Ms. Ohte tells her children, gesturing to the dogs. So far, she has been very forthcoming; once Brass and Sara explained the situation to her, she allowed them inside her home right away, and she doesn’t seem averse to talking about Jimmy and Coby. But she’s frazzled. Her children drink their Kool-Aid and hustle the dogs out the sliding glass door to the patio. Sara can see through the door that the trailer doesn’t have much in the way of a yard—just a small square of barren earth—but there are scooters and a big wheel bike waiting in the shade beneath the eaves. “I’m sorry,” Ms. Ohte tells Sara, the second person since sunrise to apologize to her for the friendliness of a dog.

“Ma’am,” Brass says, trying to keep the interview going. “Let me get this right: You said you haven’t seen or heard from your daughter Coby since 2002, but you never reported her missing?” Sara hears the edge in his voice.

Ms. Ohte sighs. She has already told Brass and Sara that Coby is her oldest daughter, the only child from a relationship she had when she was young. Coby was born in 1984, and the other children all came later. They are Coby’s half-siblings, and their father is Ms. Ohte’s fiancé, who is presently at work. Coby appears in photographs around the room, but they are all dated. In the most recent of them, she is a round-faced girl with dark hair, dark eyes, and an electric smile, standing behind her mother’s shoulder against a Sear’s studio backdrop, forever captured in adolescence.

“Coby was a real good kid,” Ms. Ohte says. “She was a straight-A student, won her ninth grade spelling bee. She got early acceptance into UNLV in her junior year. She wanted to be a nurse. But, uh, in tenth grade, she had started going with Jimmy Blanchett, and I never liked it.”

“Why not?” Brass asks, making a note in his ledger.

“Jimmy was a burnout,” Ms. Ohte says. “He, um—he had it real rough at home. He didn’t have a mom around. She died of breast cancer when he was little. And his dad came back pretty messed up from the war. Drank a lot. He waited until Jimmy was eighteen to commit suicide. Took a bunch of pills a week after Jimmy’s birthday. So, uh, Jimmy just got into a lot of trouble. He fought and stole stuff. And he was older than Coby by a year. But she wouldn’t listen to me. He got her pregnant the summer before her senior year started. I didn’t want her to have the same life I’ve had, so I told her to get an abortion, but she wanted to keep the baby and raise it with Jimmy.”

“And was Jimmy on board with this?” Brass asks, scribbling out more notes.

Ms. Ohte winces, and when she answers, her voice sounds wet. “It was the first time I’d ever seen him smile so big,” she says, nodding. “He said him and Coby and the baby were going to be a family. But, uh, he wasn’t thinking. Neither of them was thinking. They were just kids, you know? They didn’t understand how much it would cost them to raise a baby, pay the bills, just live.” She looks Brass in the eyes. “My fiancé works part-time hauling boxes at the grocery store, and we’ve got four other kids to feed. We barely make it by, so there’s no way we could afford to help them raise that baby. I told them if they were going to keep it, they were on their own, and that’s when they left to move to the city. I haven’t seen Coby since then, but I heard that her baby came out deformed and that it died in the hospital. I don’t know what she’s doing now.”

Sara looks at the cramped quarters in the trailer, the ancientness of the furniture, the children beyond the glass door, playing in the grassless side yard, happy and oblivious as they ride their scooters and bikes in circles around the concrete patio, the dogs barking between them. She isn’t unsympathetic to Ms. Ohte’s situation, being unable to keep Coby under her roof anymore. But she also knows what it felt like to be eighteen years old out in the world, with no home to go back to and no family to fall back on. And she didn’t even have a baby to care for.

“Ms. Ohte,” she says, “if we could, we would like to ask you to give a voluntary DNA sample for comparison purposes.”

Ms. Ohte looks her in the eyes. “You think my daughter is dead?”

The question should be affronting, but Sara has heard ones like it often enough that it doesn’t throw her. She holds Ms. Ohte’s gaze. “We’re not sure,” she says, “but the remains we found match Jimmy and Coby’s basic descriptions, and we recovered a gun that belonged to Jimmy’s father from the scene. We can use the DNA sample to determine whether the female remains belong to Coby or not.”

“What about Jimmy?” Ms. Ohte asks, worried, and this question does affront Sara, given that Ms. Ohte seems to have so disliked his involvement with Coby.

“We, uh, have Jimmy’s fingerprints on file. We can use them for comparison against the male remains,” Sara says, and Ms. Ohte nods, satisfied.

“Do you want me to call the kids inside?” she asks.

“No,” Sara says. “We won’t need to swab them. We, uh, like to use the closest possible DNA match that we can, which, uh, in this case would be you—unless you also happen to know how we could get in touch with Coby’s biological father?”

Ms. Ohte shakes her head—it’s just her—and Sara rises from the couch and rounds the coffee table, selecting a fresh buccal swab from a pocket of her vest. Ms. Ohte almost vibrates with nervous energy, and Sara does her best to calm her. She protracts the swab from its plastic sheaf and shows it to Ms. Ohte before guiding the tip toward her face. Ms. Ohte understands the gesture and opens her mouth.

Swabbing the inside of someone’s cheek is always a weirdly intimate interaction. Leaning in so closely to Ms. Ohte’s face, Sara smells her breath, the ghost of morning coffee on it but not yet any lunch. She counts the woman’s silver fillings amid her back molars—five in total. She feels the strange, reactive flinch as the Q-tip head brushes the vestibule. And then she retracts the swab, and Ms. Ohte shuts her mouth, and the moment is gone. She closes the sheaf over the swab tip, sealing it, and transfers the swab to a plastic collection bag. Easy enough.

“When will I know?” Ms. Ohte asks.

Less easy. The bodies are degraded. Extracting viable DNA from their mummified tissue could be difficult. It could take the DNA techs anywhere from several hours to several weeks to make a reliable comparison. Sara doesn’t want to promise anything. She doesn’t meet Ms. Ohte’s eyes.

“We’ll, uh, start running the samples right away,” she says. It isn’t a lie. Then, to Brass. “I’m gonna get this back to the lab. I’ll see you later.”

She passes out the front door, nodding goodbye to Officer Metcalf at his post. She feels calmer already, just exiting the house. It is a cool day, by Vegas standards—not as chilly here in the valley as it was on the mountainside but brisk enough that she is glad to have a jacket. Clouds overhead cast long shadows over the flat earth. She loads her kit into the back of her car and glances to the southwest, to the hazy spine of the Spring Mountains, barely visible in the distance. Even if Hank hadn’t uncovered the bodies, she and Grissom wouldn’t be in the canyon anymore; they would have finished their hike hours ago. They’d be at home in bed, sleeping before the start of shift, maybe with Grissom holding her hand, maybe with Grissom kissing her hair. She starts the car, heads back along the I-15 towards the city. The closer she gets to the lab, the calmer she feels. Even if she’s not going to where she and Grissom live, she’s going home to him, because home is wherever he is, always now.

• • • 

Greg stops Grissom in the hallway to tell him that he recovered carpet fibers from the female victim’s hair while processing the bodies. He has already sent the fibers to Trace and is waiting on results. When Grissom updates Greg on Nick and Sofia’s findings and on Sara going to Moapa with Brass, Greg volunteers to do more digging on Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte to see if he can locate them or at least locate their last known whereabouts; Grissom agrees that he should.

Grissom steps into Autopsy to find Doc Robbins putting some final notes onto the male victim’s toe tag. The room smells of germy, organic death, the deep fecal and bloody stenches of emptied bodily cavities, rot and fermentation—but the mummified bodies on the table themselves do not emit a particularly strong odor, having long since dried out and fully ceased to putrefy. Without their clothes, they appear even smaller than they did on the mountainside. Their skin is entirely browned, the color of coffee grounds and the consistency of old shoe leather. Their remaining hair has become weirdly colorless and delicate, like spun fiberglass. Doc’s Y-incisions are visible down their centers, as are his sutures, stitching them back together. Three of the male victim’s digits from his right hand occupy a stainless steel specimen bowl on an instrument tray beside the tables. Curious.

Doc notices Grissom’s attention on them. “David snapped them off while he was trying to extricate the male vic’s hand from the female vic’s for transport,” he explains, exasperated.

“Well, I’m gonna have to take them to go,” Grissom says, “—and the thumb and pinky finger, too. I’ve gotta make a print comparison.” He sets the folder full of medical and dental records from his and Sara’s database search down on Doc’s counter, making sure that Doc sees him do so. At this point, he is more interested in the Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte lead than on the random missing persons cases that came up from the blind search, but he still wants to be thorough.

“That might be difficult,” says Doc, “considering that these remains no longer have any observable fingerprints.”

Grissom flanks the table, and Doc holds up the female victim’s right hand to show him: the pads of the fingers look jerky. They lack any discernable print patterns. Grissom frowns.

“I’ll, uh, figure it out,” he says.

Doc nods but doesn’t press him to explain his intended methods. Instead, he gestures to the bodies, starting from the top down. “Based on the shapes of the skulls and incisors, I would say the victims are most likely of Asian or Pacific Islander descent, possibly—”

“—Native American?” Grissom asks, knowing that Coby Ohte, at least, grew up in Moapa on the Paiute reservation.

“Possibly,” Doc allows. He continues his report. “They both appear to be in their early to mid-twenties, based on the eruption of wisdom teeth and the fusing of their joint plates. I can’t give you a specific time of death, but I would guess that they’ve probably been dead at least a month and likely longer, considering the advanced state of their mummification.”

“What about manner of death?” Grissom asks.

Doc shakes his head. “At this point, indeterminate. The C.O.D. for both vics is traumatic brain injury due to G.S.W. to the head, but I can’t tell you if it was suicide or homicide.”

Doc grabs two neon pink forensics rods from the instrument tray beside him. He passes one to Grissom to insert into the male victim’s wound track, while he inserts the other into the female victim’s wound track himself. The rod on the male victim protrudes from just above his left temple at less than thirty degrees, while the rod on the female victim protrudes from just above her left ear at twenty degrees.

“The trajectory on the male vic’s wound track is angled slightly upward,” Doc notes, “while the female vic’s is angled slightly downward—which is what you might expect if he shot her and then shot himself, murder-suicide.”

Grissom remembers the positions of the bodies on the mountainside, that they were laying side-by-side, with the male victim holding the female victim’s left hand with his right. “But wouldn’t he have had to shoot left-handed in order to make that scenario work?” Grissom asks.

Doc nods. “And the tricky thing is that these wound angles are also consistent with shots fired by another person at close range, execution-style. Due to the degradation of the bodies, I can’t tell you if they had any sort of defensive wounds or if they sustained perimortem trauma aside from the gunshots, and the elements on the mountain destroyed any potential G.S.R. on their bodies and clothing. I did extract a 9mm bullet fragment from each skull, and I’ve already sent those up to Ballistics, but I’m not hopeful they’ll be much use. They were in very poor condition.”

“Anything else?” Grissom asks.

Doc indicates the female victim. “Yeah,” he says. “When I opened her up, I found some scarring around her pelvis that could indicate she’s given birth.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Grissom says, disappointed in the lack of evidence but not in Doc's work, which is, as always, both thorough and informative.

For the next fifteen minutes, Doc and Grissom busy themselves amputating the remaining digits from the male victim’s right hand and bagging them along with the others so that he can take them back to the lab for print analysis. Doc prattles on and on about how he and his wife recently discovered a box of long-misplaced photographs from their wedding tucked away in their attic, and Grissom half-listens to him, wandering away into thought about weddings, unasked questions, and quiet, hopeful, someday things.

It is half-past twelve by the time Grissom returns to the lab, bagged fingers ready for processing. Several years ago, he read an article by authors from the University of Indiana that detailed a method for flesh rehydration which they had adapted from archaeological—and specifically Egyptological—field practices. Their recommended formula calls for 10 grams of sodium carbonate, 316 mL of a ninety percent ethanol solution, and 684 mL of distilled water, if Grissom’s memory serves. The method appeals to him because it does not require the use of harsh detergents or astringent chemicals, which can sometimes damage cutaneous tissues rather than restore them. The tradeoff, of course, is in the time it takes to complete the rehydration process using the formula, meaning that it could be several days before Grissom will be able to compare the male victim’s fingerprints to the ones on Jimmy Blanchett’s ten-card.

For now, he attempts to rehydrate only the thumb and index finger, not wanting to waste the other specimens in case the process does not achieve the desired results. Less than an hour later, he has beakers under the fume hood, and, in them, fingers suspended in the prescribed solution. Leaving DNA, he runs into Sofia in the hall, and she tells him that Nick is in the break room, grabbing lunch. Grissom asks her to join him and Nick there and sends out a quick text to Greg: _Bring your research, 5 min._

With the team assembled, Greg gives the rundown: “Jimmy Blanchett, twenty-four, and Coby Ohte, twenty-three, both originally of the Moapa Band of Paiutes on the Moapa River Indian Reservation, but they moved to the city in 2001. I found a birth announcement in the online newsletter for their apartment complex: they had a son named Jayden Blanchett, born January 4th, 2002—”

Nick sets down his sandwich so he can talk. “That’s what their landlady told us. The baby was premature and died in the hospital. She said he had some kind of birth defect, but she didn’t know how to explain it in English, and I couldn’t catch the Spanish—”

“Me, either,” says Sofia, swirling her straw in her coffee. “She did say the baby was in the hospital for a long time—more than a month.”

Grissom does some quick mental math and realizes that Jimmy and Coby were teenagers at the time they had the baby. Losing a child would devastate any parent, but he can scarcely imagine what it must have done to parents who were essentially still children themselves.

“That’s a very slow death,” he says.

“—and it came right on the heels of Jimmy’s father’s suicide in 2001,” Greg reminds everyone. “I did a little digging, and, according to county property records, Jimmy inherited the lease on his father’s trailer lot in Moapa upon his father’s death, which has me thinking he probably inherited all his father’s other stuff, too, including the service pistol.”

“What happened to the lot?” Grissom asks.

“He sold the lease a few months later, around the time that he and Coby moved to their apartment in the city,” Greg says, checking his notes.

“Was Jimmy receiving any military benefits after his father’s death?” Nick asks. “Caleb Blanchett was a vet, and he was buried in a military cemetery.”

Greg shakes his head. “Not that I’ve found. As far as I can tell, the V.A. didn’t recognize Caleb Blanchett’s suicide as the result of any service-connected conditions.”

Nick raises an eyebrow. “So we’ve got two kids living in a low-income neighborhood. They’re fresh out of high school, so they can’t be making that much money. They’re not getting any death benefits on Dad. Then their baby dies of a birth defect after spending a month-and-a-half in the hospital, and we know they own a gun. This is starting to look more and more like a suicide.”

He isn’t necessarily wrong, but Grissom still frowns. While it is certainly possible that the manner of death in this case is suicide, it is just as possible that it is homicide, and they have yet to collect any decisive evidence on the matter, one way or another. They also still don’t have positive i.d.s on the victims. Though Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte are the likeliest matches, they shouldn’t assume that such is the case without confirmation. True, if Sara had learned from Coby’s mother that Jimmy and Coby were definitely alive and had known whereabouts, she would have called or texted the news back to the lab by now. But even if Jimmy and Coby are missing, the bodies from the mountainside may not be theirs—Grissom has seen too many strange coincidences in missing persons cases over the years to make that assumption.

“Let’s not get ahead of the evidence,” he warns.

Just then, Sofia’s phone rings, and she answers. A quick conversation with a gruff voice on the other end of the line, Sofia mostly listening and making small acknowledgements. She hangs up, looks to Grissom. “That was Brass,” she says. “He was just leaving Moapa. He says Coby’s mother hasn’t seen or heard from the kids since 2002, and she can’t confirm their current whereabouts. So unless Jimmy and Coby moved out of the state without telling anyone and without taking any of their possessions with them, I think we’ve got a couple of missing persons on our hands.”

While this new information still does not confirm that the mummified bodies in the morgue belong to Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte, it does mean that Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte are missing. And whether or not their case turns out to be one and the same with the case of the mummies from the mountain, Grissom now has enough information to launch a full investigation into Jimmy and Coby’s disappearance.

“I want you guys to go to Desert Palm. Get all the information you can on Jayden Blanchett—and that includes any financial records regarding his hospital stay,” Grissom tells Nick and Greg. “We’ve got to make a timeline from the birth of the baby to when Jimmy and Coby went missing.”

“I’ll get started on the warrants,” Sofia volunteers, rising to head back to P.D. Nick and Greg exit the room after her, going to their lockers to fetch jackets and gear.

With everyone rushed off to fill new assignments, Grissom slowly gathers his things, taking his folder with him. It is not yet two o’clock, but enough time has passed since Doc performed the post that he wants to check on the progress in Ballistics. If the bullet fragments Doc extracted from the victims’ skulls can point towards one manner of death over the other, he needs to know which one it is.

He greets the day tech, Rich, and asks for a status report.

“Sorry, no dice, boss,” Rich tells him. With a gesture, he invites Grissom to look down a scope at the mangled fragments, and Grissom does so. Even under magnification, twisted brass and aged blood, bone, and fibrin bits are all there is to see. “The bullets are 9mm rounds with full-metal jackets, consistent with ammunition that could be used in a Beretta M9 semiautomatic pistol like the one you found next to the vics,” Rich says from over his shoulder. “But these jackets are too degraded to be used for comparison purposes. There’s no way to match them to the Beretta M9 you recovered from the scene.”

Since Doc had warned Grissom that the bullets were in poor condition at Autopsy, Rich’s evaluation doesn’t surprise him. He thanks Rich for the report before navigating back to his office. With Nick and Greg out on a run, Catherine and Warrick not yet on, and Sara likely still on her way back from Moapa, now comes a lull. All the requested tests still have results pending, and he has no new tests to order or experiments to conduct barring new information from either Moapa or the hospital.

Since he might not get another chance, he decides to take his lunch. Two days ago, he bought himself some deli pasta and a bag of carrot sticks and left them in his office fridge. He finds them now and sits to eat at his desk as he reads over his copy of Greg’s initial research, wanting to acquaint himself as much as possible with the details of the case. He pores over the assembled documents: the map showing the location of Caleb Blanchett’s trailer lot in Moapa, the deed of sale for the lease with Jimmy’s signature at the bottom next to that of a notary. He carries away into thinking about the complexities of property transactions and wondering from where Jimmy Blanchett might have received financial advice regarding the ownership of his father’s trailer.

“Hello, Gilbert,” says a voice—says Sara.

He looks up to see her standing in front of him, peering over his work and his lunch. Her manner is affected, flirtatious. When did she come in? When did she get back from Moapa? He glances at the clock. How did it get to be past three already? She smirks at his obvious disorientation and, while he is still flustered, snatches two carrot sticks from his lunch, taking a bite from them as she sits down in his guest chair.

Even with the rest of the team away from the lab, her move is a bold one. Grissom’s office door is open, and there are always eavesdropping lab techs and roving police officers to worry about, not to mention Ecklie. She knows as much and is being purposefully incautious—which is sometimes a game that she and Grissom play. They like to see how much they can slip in, how plain they can be, how freely they can tease each other, all while keeping their secret a secret still. It is an exhibitionist impulse they share, a form of thrill-seeking. She swallows her bite of carrot sticks.

“Deb Ohte volunteered a DNA sample for comparison,” she says, “and, if we can manage to extract any viable DNA from the female vic, the day tech says she’ll run it.”

Now that he is oriented, Grissom can process what Sara has told him—not just what she has said but how she has said it. A DNA match between Deb Ohte and the female victim would prove the connection between Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte’s disappearance and the case of the dead bodies on the mountain definitively. But Sara isn’t entirely pleased. Her flirtation and good news mask a more subdued base emotion, something quiet and faraway.

Since meeting her nine years ago, Grissom has learned to read Sara, her little looks and tics. There are times when she seems almost to recede behind her eyes, sometimes wandered away in her memory, looking out windows from her own family home, watching the dark tide ebb over the bioluminescent beaches of Tomales Bay and ignoring the shouting over her shoulder; sometimes back to old houses and apartments scattered across NorCal, into rooms where she slept for a few weeks or months at a time, then never saw again. She was very young back then.

Often, it happens when the TV show she and Grissom are watching reaches for a gritty storyline or when a case they’re working reminds her of something that she’s seen and flinched at before. Grissom can tell not just by her eyes but by how she talks louder, puts on a stubborn smile, jokes about topics that aren’t particularly funny. She has a skill for burying things, enough that their teammates don’t always notice when she’s doing it. Grissom didn’t always notice at first, either. Or at least he didn’t know what he was noticing.

Now he does.

Something between here and Moapa must have thrown her. Maybe something at the Ohte residence. Whatever it was, she won’t want to talk about it at the lab—maybe later, at home, safe between blankets and sheets, where Grissom can hold her. For now all he can do is try to be gentle about it, to remind her that she is here, and he is here with her. Present.

“Did you get lunch?” he asks. Before she can answer, he passes his fork and the deli pasta across the desk to her. She accepts the offering on impulse, but surprise registers on her face. Her eyes brighten. According to its rules, their game doesn't usually work this way. “There’s no pepperoni in it,” he says.

She stares at Grissom, depth and softness replacing the farawayness behind her eyes. More heat passes between them. If they were at home, she would lean over the desktop to kiss him now, certainly. But since they’re at work, and since his door is still open, she smiles one of her small, bashful smiles at him and lifts the fork. Cheers. Back in the moment.


	3. Chapter 3

**March 2nd, 2007**

Sara is still in Grissom’s office when Nick and Greg return with a report from the hospital. Greg says that Jayden Blanchett was born with a birth anomaly called gastroschisis, meaning that a portion of his bowel protruded through a hole in his abdomen near his navel. He died of sepsis after forty-seven days spent in the NICU. Nick explains that the warrant that the judge granted Sofia only covered the collection of Jayden’s medical records, not Jimmy and Coby’s financial records at the hospital. However, Jayden’s doctors estimated that the bills for Jayden’s care totaled in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“That’s one steep bill for two outta-work kids,” he says. “Grief and debt, man.”

He gives Grissom a very pointed look before leaving the room, Greg in tow.

Sara quirks an eyebrow. “What’s that about?” she asks Grissom.

“Nick is pursuing a theory: the double-suicide of Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte, precipitated by the death of their child and loss of income,” Grissom says.

Sara can tell by his lofty tone that he doesn’t altogether concur—or at least that he is not sufficiently impressed by the evidence to concur just yet. It is early in the investigation, and especially considering that they still haven’t positively i.d.’d the vics. Still, Nick’s theory isn’t entirely without merit, based on the circs.

“Well,” Sara says, “we can’t say for certain that the vics are Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte, but given the location of the crime scene and the positioning of the bodies, suicide is a strong possibility.” Grissom looks for a second as if he wants to interject, but Sara doesn’t allow him to. “Did you know,” she says, “that the Aokigahara Forest at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan is also known as the Suicide Forest? It’s reported that over a hundred people kill themselves there every year. According to the local lore, the forest is haunted by _yūrei_ , or the angry spirits of those who have died there.”

Plying each other with trivia is one of Grissom and Sara’s favorite pastimes. Geography, history, anthropology, literature—it’s all fair game. This particular trivia, or at least the way Sara delivers it, seems to impress Grissom. He cocks his head a bit to the side, slides his reading glasses off his face to see her better, as if she were something new. His eyes are very blue today.

“Didn’t you once tell me that your Japanese history wasn’t very good?” he asks.

The question is playful but has some awe laced into it, and the way Grissom asks it causes heat to spread out over Sara’s skin again, like it did on the mountain. She adores Grissom’s memory—the way he can recall the most inane things she told him years ago as if they were both pressing and current. Before they started dating, she never used to think he was listening to her. Now she knows he has so many things she’s said memorized. He makes her feel adored in unexpected ways.

She smiles at him and shrugs. “Well,” she says, downplaying. She doesn’t tell him she read a National Geographic article on the Aokigahara in the waiting room at her dentist's office a few weeks back.

So now quiet, Grissom and Sara alone together in his office, both of them reading—Sara her copy of Greg’s report, Grissom a medical textbook, open to an entry on gastroschisis—the only sounds the low, constant lull of the lab coming in through the open door and the occasional turning of pages. In-between sections, Sara will glance up at Grissom, and, more often than not, he’ll glance up at her at the same time. Though Sara probably should have left Grissom’s office when Nick and Greg did in order to keep up appearances, she didn’t, and she feels content with her choice, and Grissom seems to feel the same.

If they were at home right now—even on a normal day and not a shared day off—they would be sleeping, and, for as much as Sara might like to think that she isn’t so entirely predictable a creature, her body has its rhythms and habits and, so, expectations. Since it is late afternoon, she wants to be wrapped up in Grissom, his arm curled over her ribs, his chin rested on her shoulder. She feels dreamy and drawn to him, her internal tide ebbing in his direction. Usually, either before they go to sleep or after they wake, they make love, and her body wants for that, too, remembering like an echo.

She meets his eyes, smiles a little. When he smiles back, he looks tired but glad that they can be alone together, if not in bed, then here.

A knock at the door, and Hodges, carrying folders. “I have the results on the carpet fibers and oily residue you got off your mountain mummies,” he says brightly. He addresses Grissom only, ignoring Sara, though she was the one who ordered the test on the residue. His flippancy annoys her, but she doesn’t say anything.

Grissom does, shooting a scrutinizing look over the lenses of his reading glasses. “Why are you here?” he says, frowning. He means to ask why Hodges is at the lab at four o’clock in the afternoon when he’s the night tech, and particularly since that the day tech had already come in, but his inflection makes it sound like an existential question, and Sara loves him for it.

Hodges doesn’t miss a beat. “Because my daytime counterpart got overwhelmed, running analyses for your team’s double and the day team’s triple, and he cried out for my help,” he says. “Being the magnanimous and hardworking soul that I am, I decided to come in early to rescue him—and it’s a lucky thing I did, because I may have just broken the case.” He fully enters the room, stepping up beside Sara’s chair at the front of Grissom’s desk. He opens his top folder, producing a print-out, which he hands to Grissom, continuing to ignore Sara. “The carpet fibers Sanders found in the female vic’s hair were tri-lobal and double-looped, which means they came from a vehicle. They were a red, synthetic nylon, custom blend, probably from an American-made vehicle produced sometime during the 1980s.”

Sara frowns. “No make or model?”

Hodges doesn’t even look at her. “Not this time,” he says.

Grissom frowns. “And this information breaks the case how?”

“It doesn’t,” Hodges says. “The information that breaks the case is the results I got back on the oily residue Sara collected from the male vic’s jeans.” He flips to his next folder and produces a second print-out for Grissom, launching into one of his typically ornate presentations: “In 1866, a physician named John Ellis founded the Continuous Oil Refining Company. He was interested in the possible healing powers of crude oil but found that it didn’t possess any medicinal value, though it did possess lubricating properties. Ellis eventually abandoned the medical practice in order to pursue the development of a high viscosity petroleum lubricant for steam engines, using combinations of petroleum with animal and vegetable fats. Through his experiments, he developed oil that worked effectively at high temperatures and would protect against gummed valves, corroded cylinders, and leaking seals. His invention was what allowed for the expansion of the railroad across the continental United States and, eventually, for the rise of the automobile.” A breath. “The residue I tested from the male victim’s pants is an admixture of poly-alpha olefins, ester, isomerized oil, mineral oil, canola, butanol, polyalkylene glycol, organophosphates, ethanol, aliphatic amine, dimethyl polysiloxane—”

“So, oil?” Sara interrupts him.

“Motor oil, to be specific—along with gasoline, automatic transmission fluid, and brake fluid.”

“So, garage grime?” Grissom clarifies.

Hodges nods. “Garage grime, indeed. I also found traces of the same garage grime residue on the carpet fibers, but it was mingled with an organic substance. I kicked a sample over to DNA, and they determined that it’s blood. Too degraded to run DNA on it, but definitely human. Sanders collected the fibers from the opposite side of the victim’s skull from the G.S.W., indicating a blood pool—”

“—but the soil exemplars I collected from the mountain beside the bodies showed no evidence of a blood pool, even one that had been degraded over time,” Grissom adds.

“Right,” says Hodges. “And that means that—”

“—since the carpet fibers came from the female vic’s hair, she most likely sustained her head wound before she arrived on that mountain, which means that the bodies were likely transferred from someplace where there was garage grime to the mountainside in an American-made, 1980s-make vehicle,” Sara infers. “Possible body dump.” Now it’s her turn to ignore Hodges. She looks to Grissom for a cue.

“So we’re investigating a double-homicide, staged to look like a double-suicide,” Grissom says, “—which means we’ve got Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte as persons missing under mysterious circumstances relating to a homicide investigation. That should be enough to get a warrant for their medical records. I’ll put Greg on it.”

“And I’ll get on their tax records, see if I can track down their employment history,” Sara offers. Then. “So much for Nick’s theory.”

Grissom smirks.

Hodges closes his folders. “No need to thank me,” he says to Grissom. “Just remember this when it comes time for my yearly performance review.”

“Thank you, Dave,” Grissom says, and Hodges nods and departs, pleased with himself.

So now the rush, the case reviving after a stall, revving like a machine, all its gears and wheels suddenly back in motion. They still don’t have i.d. on the vics, but finally they’ve got a direction, and the fact that the investigation now centers around a homicide gives them legal recourse to pursue avenues that might have otherwise have remained closed to them.

Sara rises from her chair, gathering her things, her previous sleepy feeling replaced by a burst of adrenaline. Grissom rises, too, rounding his desk. When he draws up beside her, Sara reaches out to him, unthinking, brushing her fingers down his arm, grazing over his wrist, having to touch him, even quickly, somehow, before they part. He registers shock, more so than with the stolen carrot sticks or the ghost story of Aokigahara, but just as his look reminds Sara that she should really show more restraint, suddenly he’s reaching back, determined, and, for the briefest second before they reach the door to the hall, he takes her hand in his and squeezes it—the gesture a _Goodbye_ , an _I love you_ , a stand-in for other touches he might give her if they were in bed, per a usual afternoon.

Sara thrills and goes, her heart beating fast with her. She’s hit the ground running, and she wants to follow her lead. And so: the tedious task of submitting paperwork for a warrant, of explaining the necessity and provenance of her proposed search so that all Brass has do is to take what she has written with him to the courthouse, and all the judge has to do is sign what she has written in his chambers. She faxes what she has to P.D., and Judy pages her to the front desk a half-hour later for the results.

In AV, she brings up the online government databases, typing out Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte’s social security numbers so often she starts to memorize them. From the B.I.A., she gets their tribal enrollment membership records, and from the D.M.V., driver’s license information, vehicle ownership history, and citations for traffic violations. She looks at Jimmy’s criminal record, his parole stipulations and court documents. Then she’s digging deeper, taking notes on his and Coby’s tax payments and employment timelines. The page shows only data—just dates, addresses, filed forms, and monetary sums—but she susses out the sad story between the lines.

Here were two kids who had nothing but each other in the world, not even jobs to support themselves by, not even anyone to miss them when they went missing. Looking at their D.M.V. photos, poring through their private details, Sara starts to get a feel for them, for the people and not only the bodies they left behind. They were in trouble—Jimmy with the law, Coby with her family, both of them with money—but they lived together and died together, and thinking about it causes Sara to feel an ache along one of the deeper seams in her chest. She wants to find out what happened to these kids. No one should have to stay lost and alone forever.

Her searches are labyrinthine, each database entry leading her to a fresh internet query, to more entries in her report, to a list of businesses and names and phone numbers for follow-up. Time is liquid, and the lab moves around her as if in orbit, techs and criminalists coming and going while she remains static at the center of all things, engrossed in her private investigation. She ignores everything except her own tasks until, after some time, she feels a familiar heat come up behind her. She doesn’t even have to turn around.

“Coby’s worked on maid service at a motel off the Strip, as a diner waitress, running a newspaper route. Then, most recently, until last November, she worked as a cashier at a 7-Eleven in her and Jimmy’s neighborhood,” she says, eyes still trained to the screen. “But Jimmy’s last known regular employment was at an auto shop from 2001 to 2002. After that, he’s got a few odd jobs here and there, but that drops off pretty soon. Then, he’s a ghost—looks like Coby had been supporting the both of them. I’m guessing that after the baby died, he stopped working.”

Grissom is beside her now. He sets a hand on the back of her chair but this time doesn’t touch her. She still only sees him in her peripheral vision, still hasn’t turned to face him, but she is as aware of his presence and person as if she were staring directly into his eyes.

“Have you contacted the shop yet?”

She shakes her head. “According to what I can find, it seems to have shut down this last January. Foreclosed due to backed tax payments. However, I did find the name of the owner—a Rick Barrow—and what appears to be some current contact info for him. I figure it might be worth it to get him in here, see if he knows anything about what Jimmy’s been up to the last few years. Or ask if he has any thoughts about garage grime.”

“Good,” Grissom says. “I’ll call Brass to get the guy in here.”

A knock, and both Grissom and Sara turn to see Wendy Simms leaning in the doorframe. She greets them with an awkward smile. “Hi,” she says. “I, uh, just wanted to let you know that I was able to extract some DNA from your female mummy and compare it to the sample from Deb Ohte. They share seven alleles in common, so unless Deb Ohte has any other grown daughters, then Coby Ohte is your victim.”

“Nice,” Sara says, smiling at Wendy.

“How fortuitous that Ms. Simms decided to come into work early today,” Grissom agrees.

Wendy frowns. “I got a text from Hodges saying you had ordered ‘all hands on deck’ for this case,” she says. “I thought—” She closes her eyes and shakes her head, seeming to realize something that annoys her. “Never mind.” Another headshake, clearing cobwebs. Then. “Doc never sent up any tissue samples for the male vic. Do you want me to request—?”

“We don’t have an exemplar,” Sara says. “Nothing to compare it to.”

“I’m working on rehydrating the male victim’s fingers so we can compare them to Jimmy Blanchett’s fingerprints,” Grissom explains.

There is nothing else for Wendy to do, then. She nods her understanding and ducks out of the doorframe, leaving Grissom and Sara alone together again. Now finally they’re able to look at each other, to meet eyes. Sometimes a break in a case like this one comes like heat lightning, a flash along the horizon—seemingly from nowhere, but with a crackle of electricity to it—and they both feel it like a jolt. They’ve got a manner of death, a confirmed i.d. on one victim, and a probable i.d. on the other. They’ve got a timeline full of holes waiting to be filled in: two kids who moved from the desert to the city, who lost a baby and then seemingly got lost themselves.

Grissom gives Sara a sly look. Someone who didn’t know him would never imagine that he was an adrenaline junkie by looking at him, but Sara knows he is. Knows that they both are. Sometimes it’s roller coasters. Sometimes it’s playing fast and loose with their secret. And sometimes it’s this: just lightning and heat, them answering questions together, solving puzzles, finding each other.

• • • 

After Wendy confirms that the female victim is Coby Ohte, Sofia asks Grissom if he wants to release the information to the press, and he gives her the go-ahead, though only regarding Coby’s disappearance—not her murder. Sofia drafts a statement asking for anyone with information regarding Coby’s whereabouts between January and the present to come forward. It mentions that the police are also looking for information regarding Jimmy Blanchett in connection with the case. Local stations are requested to air the statement during the eight o’clock news hour. Grissom doesn’t know what might come from the announcement, but, as Sara reminds him, any little tip might help.

He and Sara have done some follow-up on Coby’s previous employment, confirming that no one from the 7-Eleven has heard from her since she was let go in November 2006. Nick has gone back to her and Jimmy’s apartment with a fresh warrant, looking to collect bills, letters, cellphones, day planners, calendars, laptops, and anything else that might suggest where Jimmy and Coby went on the day of their disappearance. Greg’s search of Jimmy and Coby’s medical records has yielded the information that Coby did not receive prenatal care while she was pregnant with Jayden, which is perhaps why she and Jimmy were seemingly unaware of Jayden’s gastroschisis prior to his birth. Greg is currently compiling information on Jimmy and Coby’s financial records, specifically regarding the bills from Jayden’s hospital stay. He has already determined that, like forty-seven million other Americans, Jimmy and Coby were uninsured.

At quarter after eight, Sofia calls Grissom to tell him that their press release was a success: a bank teller from a Wells Fargo branch in Jimmy and Coby’s neighborhood contacted the department, claiming that she helped them to open an account for a safety deposit box on January 6th, 2007—five days prior to the last known date on which their landlady, Mrs. Dominguez, can place them at their apartment. The teller claims that Jimmy and Coby acted suspiciously during the transaction. She has come into P.D. to offer a statement, and Sofia wants Grissom and Sara there to hear her give it.

So they walk the block between the buildings. By now, the sun has set, and the city is aglow with its vivid neons. The moon has risen, a fat, waxing gibbous visible over the horizon. There is no cloud cover, and the night is cool and clear. Some brave Texas Rangers in the planters along the buildings have already purpled and budded, painting the air with a saccharine aroma, like bubblegum. Light pollution always drowns out the stars in the downtown, but Grissom knows which constellations roam the skies this time of year and imagines them overhead: Leo and Ursa Major, Draco, Cetus, and Pegasus.

Sara catches him glancing at the heavens and smirks, and he has no doubt she knows him well enough to know his thoughts and to see the same stellar map he does splayed out in her mind’s eye. She is beautiful under cover of dark, shadow and moonlight playing over her face. For her, he thinks Neruda sonnets; for her, he thinks of last night, the lights turned down in their bedroom, her dark hair fanned out over the white sheets on the mattress, her body warm and responsive beneath his own; for her, he thinks wedding photos in boxes in the attic; for her, he thinks that, one day, there will come a time when he can ask her his question, whether by light of day or black of night.

Only when they reach the entrance to P.D. does Grissom realize they have spent their entire walk in silence, him watching Sara without speaking. Staring at her, actually. He meets her eyes, worried, suddenly, that he’s been remiss regarding their opportunity to talk and that she might think him rude. But as she steps under the halide floodlights leading up to the door, he sees warmth in her eyes. She wears that small, purse-lipped smile that means she feels especially fond.

“See something you like?” she teases him, honey in her voice.

His skin heats with a blush, because, well.

He holds her gaze as he opens the door, letting both of them inside the building, taking them out of the nighttime and into the drone of fluorescent lights. They flash their i.d. badges to the officer at the front desk—though, of course, she knows them both well enough not to need to see their i.d.s at all. She is on a phone call but mouths that Detective Curtis is in Interview Room #2.

Interviewing a witness who has come in of her own volition is always different than interviewing a suspect in custody—more decorum and structure. The teller’s name is Monae Jefferson, and she clutches a loaner L.V.P.D. coffee mug, clicking her acrylic nails against its ceramic. She is young, professional, and well put-together, but obviously nervous. Sofia makes the introductions, and, on her prompt, Ms. Jefferson recounts how Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte came into her branch on January 6th, 2007, looking to rent a safety deposit box. She says she had to file an incident report regarding the transaction, and Sofia asks her why.

“Because it’s bank policy to file an incident report whenever someone makes a suspicious deposit, and, uh, Mr. Blanchett, he was, um—he came in all sweaty,” she says. “He was twitchy, paranoid, acting real short with me. He kept telling me to hurry up.”

“What about Coby?” Sara asks.

“She hung back, didn’t say anything.” More acrylic tapping on the coffee mug. “She looked like maybe—maybe she hadn’t slept in a couple of days? Like she’d been crying. Hadn’t showered. Him, too, actually. And he, uh—he told me that someone was trying to kill him.”

As a rule, Grissom values witness testimony far less than empirical evidence. But what Ms. Jefferson says catches his attention. He perks up, interested, and Sara does the same beside him, and Sofia beside her.

“Did Mr. Blanchett explain who was trying to kill him or say anything else—?” Sofia asks.

Ms. Jefferson shakes her head. “He just opened the safety deposit account.”

“And can you tell us what Mr. Blanchett put into his safety deposit box?” Grissom asks.

Ms. Jefferson shakes her head again. “Box contents are confidential.”

Sofia glances at Grissom and Sara. “We can get a warrant,” she says.

“Is their account still active on the box?” Grissom asks Ms. Jefferson.

She nods. “Renters pay by the quarter,” she says. “He had cash and made his full payment up front. His next payment isn’t due until April.”

“Thank you,” Sofia says. “You’ve been very helpful. Stay here for a second, and I’ll be back with some paperwork.”

She rises, and Grissom and Sara rise with her, all three of them exiting the room into the hall. They convene outside the door.

“So Jimmy and Coby thought that someone was trying to kill them,” Sara says, and Grissom can almost see her mind working over this new information, weighing and sizing it, fitting it in with the other pieces of the puzzle, already locked into place. “Our best bet on finding out who he thought was after him is gonna be—”

“—finding out what’s in that safety deposit box,” Grissom says, finishing her thought.

Sofia nods. “Ms. Jefferson gave us more than enough to go on to get a warrant on the box. We won’t be able to make it to the bank until tomorrow, but I’ll start filing. We can go first thing.”

Grissom and Sara’s walk back to the lab isn’t silent like their walk to P.D. Sara talks excitedly, animatedly, her breath visible in white spates against the cold, night air. “So if Jimmy knew someone was trying to kill him, this wasn’t just a heat-of-the-moment killing. It was premeditated—Jimmy might’ve received some threats. Maybe we’ll get a lucky hit off something Nick collected from the apartment, find some contacts, some kind of trail.”

“Maybe.”

“But I’m wondering what Jimmy put in that deposit box—something he wanted to keep from his killer or some sort of collateral?”

“Yeah, well, if it was collateral, it didn’t work.”

“According to the witness, Jimmy said someone was trying to kill _him_ specifically—not him and Coby. Do you think that’s significant? That maybe it was just Jimmy who was in trouble, and Coby’s murder wasn’t part of the plan to start out with?”

“Maybe.”

Grissom doesn’t mean to wax so laconic, but sometimes he likes allowing Sara to talk things out—it helps both of them to think when she does so. She is good at contingencies, at following each rabbit as deep down its hole as it will go. While she speaks, he listens and ponders, sometimes falling down rabbit holes of his own.

They approach the lab, and she gives him a searching look, eyes scanning his face the same as they would text on a page. He allows it, doesn’t flinch from her attention. For a second, her expression is unreadable. Then she seems to figure him out. A smirk at the corners of her mouth.

Archie Johnson flags them down immediately once they reenter the lab. “Got the ‘all hands on’ text from Hodges. Came in as soon as I could,” he says, gesturing them into AV with him.

He has a cell phone call log pulled up on his main screen, and Grissom and Sara crowd around him at his computer station, Sara on his left side, Grissom on his right, in order to be able to see. He gestures at the spread. “Nick wasn’t able to locate either Jimmy or Coby’s phones at the apartment, but I got a waiver for the last six months of data from Coby’s cell phone service provider. Five months ago, she only had regular contact with three numbers: main office at her apartment complex, the 7-Eleven where she worked, and Boyfriend Jimmy. But in December, she started getting calls from this new number—at first, one or two a week, but then a couple of times a day. The number is unlisted, probably from a disposable cellphone. She never calls it. It always calls her. Then on January 11th, she places a call to a different unknown number, and then one last call to Jimmy, and that’s the final call she makes.”

“Five calls a day from the same unlisted number,” Sara says, observing the data from last few dates in January leading up to the date of Jimmy and Coby’s disappearance. “That can’t have been good.”

“What about Jimmy?” Grissom asks Archie. “What does his call history look like?”

“Well, aside from the calls he took from Coby,” Archie says, “I don’t know. Waiver hasn’t come through on his records yet.”

Sara leans forward against the desk, mulling this new information. “If Nick didn’t find the phones at the apartment, and they weren’t on the mountain or with the victims’ personal effects, then maybe the killer took them with him.”

“What about Coby’s voice mailbox?” Grissom asks. “Have you been able to access that?”

“According to her service provider, she never set it up,” Archie says, shrugging.

Then, Grissom’s phone buzzes in his pocket, and he retrieves it to find a new text message from Greg, asking him and Sara to come to the layout room when they can. And so they go, Archie promising to text them if he turns up with anything probative regarding Jimmy’s records.

In the layout room, Greg has dozens of documents spread out over the display table, illuminated by its glow.

“I followed the paper trail,” he says proudly.

Grissom sees bills printed with the Desert Palm logo in watermark on the page, bank statements, receipts of payment, Greg’s notes written on lined paper in his messy, adolescent scrawl. He and Sara step up to the table. They stand close together, his right arm touching her left arm from the elbow down—another touch invisible, even with Greg standing right beside them. Grissom feels Sara’s heat through the sleeve of her jacket.

Greg points to a first document, a bill with the Desert Palm watermark. “Jimmy and Coby were billed $110,000 for Jayden’s hospital care and death expenses up front.” He gestures to another document—one with the seal of the State of Nevada printed over the address. “The state absorbed most of the cost through Medicaid and temporary welfare services. Seems like Jimmy and Coby were assigned a really good social worker.” He gestures to a letter from someone at the Nevada Department of Social Services. “Still,” he says, “even with the aid, they were left with a $30,000 differential left to pay.” He now indicates a bank statement. “They deposited a $10,000 check in their bank account pretty soon after receiving their bill in February 2002.”

“Where did they get that kind of money?” Sara asks.

“From a guy named Rick Barrow,” says Greg.

Grissom frowns. “That’s the name of Jimmy’s former employer at the auto shop,” he says, remembering Sara’s employment history report from earlier in the day.

Greg shrugs. He hadn’t known. “Okay, well, they used the $10,000 from him to make a first payment on the hospital bill. Then in March ’02, they made two large cash deposits into their account at $10,000 apiece. Used those to pay off the rest of the bill.” Greg picks up his notes and reads from them. “From there, things get interesting: Coby works at the 7-Eleven, making a little above minimum wage. Jimmy doesn’t work regularly but receives an occasional paycheck for doing odd jobs around town. Every month, they pay rent and make a withdrawal of $300 from their bank account on top of that—and I’m thinking the $300 is going towards repaying whoever loaned them the $20,000 in cash in February. Installments. Jimmy’s paychecks become fewer and farther between over time. Then, in November ‘06, Coby’s paychecks stop, and so do the monthly $300 cash withdrawals.”

Sara stops Greg before he can say more. “March 2002 to November 2006? That’s, what? Fifty-six months of payments at $300 per month? So that’s $16,800 they’d paid back on their debt, which means they were still $3,200 in the red—possibly more if the loan accrued interest.”

She rattles off the numbers without pause, making her calculations as quickly as she can speak. Grissom has always admired her faculty for mental math, whether she was ballparking calculus functions in the field or price-checking the cost of peanut butter by the ounce during a grocery run. So now Jimmy and Coby’s financial crisis, laid out in an instant. He doesn’t manage to suppress a smile at her cleverness, but he doesn’t think either she or Greg notices.

“—and they never made any more payments,” Greg says. He points to another bank statement. “From what I can tell, these kids were barely scraping by. Coby was able to collect some unemployment, and their landlady seems to have given them a break on their rent, but it still looks like sometimes they could barely even afford to eat.”

“And from what you can tell, they never made any payments to Rick Barrow for the $10,000 check he gave them in February?” Grissom asks.

“Nope,” Greg says.

Grissom considers, figuring. “If they never made any payments back to him, that suggests the money was a gift. And that’s odd.”

“Yeah,” Greg agrees. He turns to Grissom specifically. “I mean, even though you’re, like, the best boss in the world”—he smiles in his squirrelly way, holding up his hands in deference—“I don’t think you’d gift me $10,000, no strings attached, especially if you ended up firing me two weeks later.”

“He gave them the money before he fired Jimmy but then never asked for any of it back after he fired him?” Sara asks, shocked.

“We need to talk to this Barrow guy,” Grissom says.

“Yeah, well, that’s gonna have to wait until we can find him,” says a voice from the doorframe—Nick, wearing a jacket. Judging by the way cold clings to his body, following him like a train, he must have recently come inside from the someplace outdoors. Grissom hadn’t realized he had even left the lab. But Nick explains without him even having to ask. “Brass and I just went to Barrow’s apartment, tried to talk to him. Guy wasn’t home, and his apartment manager doesn’t know when he’ll be back.”

Now that Nick has come closer, stepping up beside the table, Grissom takes in his effect. His voice is dry and tired, eyes small and dark with want of sleep. And Greg looks the same. It is after ten, meaning that they’ve both been on for nearly twenty-three hours. No one stays fresh after so long, and Catherine and Warrick should be in soon anyway.

“All right,” Grissom says. “Why don’t you go home for the night? Get some sleep, both of you.”

For a micro-second, they look as if they might protest, not wanting to walk away from a hot case, even for a few hours, never mind their physical exhaustion. But before they can speak, Sara does, saving them from themselves.

“Yeah,” she says wryly, “you both look awful.”

Her manner is disarming—all in her bright eyes and a smirk. Nick chuckles, and Greg smiles. When she puts it that way, how could they argue? Nick chucks her arm as he exits the room. Greg mumbles a goodbye to her, and she waves him past her. It is the kind of interaction Grissom could never have—soft and personable in a way that is Sara’s province with them and not his.

Watching her, he thinks again of poetry and their bedroom, dark; lost photographs in the attic; and of hopeful, someday things. He loves her every small detail: her face in relief, under cover of night and moonlight; her aptitude for solving math problems; her carefulness with others even when they’re not careful with themselves. All of it might be almost unnoticeable to someone else. But he has spent years noticing her small Sara things, loving them and tucking them away inside him, so he can bear them with him always, even when he and Sara are apart. Sometimes in seemingly transitory moments like this one, he feels so impossibly sweet on her.

She sees him staring again. “What?” she says, her smirk for Nick and Greg transforming into a shy smile for him.

“Nothing,” he says, but that’s not what he means at all.

• • • 

Enough time has passed since deli pasta and carrot sticks that it is time to eat again.

“Are you hungry?” Sara asks Grissom, leaning in much closer to him than she would to anyone else. She wants to reach up, brush his hair back with her hand. She loves running her hands through his hair and along his skin. Loves touching him when they’re talking. But they are still in the layout room, in public, and at work. So she looks without touching, puts the sweetness that would be in her touch into her voice. “I’m hungry. We haven’t ordered out from that twenty-four hour Indian place in a while. Do you want to do that?”

He nods, watching her the way he’s been watching her all night. He is in one of his pensive moods and isn’t talking much. Years ago, when she didn’t know him as well, she would have thought he was upset about something, but now she can tell that he is thinking, unraveling something in his mind.

“What should I order for you?”

“You choose. I trust you.”

He has a talent for saying almost foolishly romantic things in the most mundane situations and being so completely artless about doing so. Heat blooms over her skin for him like it has so many other times throughout the day. She goes to place the call, tells him she’ll meet him in the break room. He mumbles goodbye to her as she steps away, and she feels his eyes on her back until she rounds the corner, out of sight.

Within a half-hour, the food has arrived, and so have Catherine and Warrick, who attend to some loose ends on the robbery case they worked the night previous before coming into the break room for new assignments. Bright smells of cumin, coriander, ginger, and neem paint the air.

“Sorry,” Sara says. “I should have held off on ordering until you guys got here. Do you want some? There’s enough to share.”

Catherine declines her offer, but Warrick looks pleased and pulls the takeout bag over to him as he joins her and Grissom at the table. “Ooh,” he says, finding some curry in a plastic cup and claiming it for himself. He takes a fork. “So what we got going on tonight? I hear you found some bodies while you were walking your dog, Griss. I didn’t even know you had a dog.”

“He’s a man of many secrets,” Sara says.

Grissom shoots her a warning look, reminding her that they need to be careful—and especially around Catherine, who is more tuned into interpersonal interactions than anyone else on the team. His caution is warranted, of course. But Sara doesn’t feel too sorry about her quip. She bites back a smile and reaches for the takeout bag. Sometimes she honestly can’t help herself. Teasing Grissom is too much fun. She passes out napkins to him and Warrick. He passes out copies of the case files to Warrick and Catherine.

“We got two mummified d.b.s,” he says, “—one i.d.’d one as Coby Ohte through a familial DNA match. We’re still waiting to confirm i.d. on the male vic, but for now we’ve got him tentatively i.d.’d as her boyfriend, Jimmy Blanchett. Both Jimmy and Coby went missing under suspicious circumstances circa January 11th of this year. No one has seen them since.”

“Had anyone filed a missing persons report?” Catherine asks.

“No,” Sara says. “But a Wells Fargo clerk helped them to open a safety deposit box five days prior to their disappearance, and she filed an incident report on the transaction, saying that Jimmy was claiming somebody was out to kill him. Sofia is working on a warrant so we can get into that safety deposit box tomorrow.”

“Do we know who Jimmy thought was after him?” Warrick asks.

“No,” Grissom says. “But Jimmy and Coby had a child who died in the hospital after a prolonged illness, and they had some substantial bills to pay. We know they received a $10,000 check from a man named Rick Barrow, who owned the auto shop where Jimmy used to work, and two $10,000 cash sums from another unknown source or sources. They seemed to be paying off the $20,000 cash loans in installments, but they never paid back Barrow. We’re still trying to track him down. He hasn’t been home.”

Catherine has donned her reading glasses and is looking at her copy of Greg’s financial report. She chews on a thought. “Do we know for certain that the cash sums didn’t come from Barrow, too? Maybe he was the only source and they were working on paying back the total $30,000 to him but just hadn’t had the chance yet.”

“That’s possible,” Grissom allows, “but there’s no way to prove it.”

Catherine nods, agreed to his point. “Okay, so what else we got, then?”

“Archie opened up Coby’s phone records,” Sara says, “and found out that after she and Jimmy got the money, she started receiving several calls a day from an unlisted number. On the day of her disappearance, she also placed a call to a different unlisted number. Her last call was to Jimmy, and then both of them were just gone.”

“Hodges identified traces of motor oil, brake fluid, and transmission fluid on the bodies, in addition to carpet fibers from the floor or trunk of a vehicle. We’re thinking body dump, staged to look like a suicide—complete with Jimmy’s father’s Army service pistol arranged beside the bodies for dramatic effect. We still don’t know when exactly the vics were killed, and we haven’t found our primary crime scene,” Grissom says.

“No leads on the vehicle used to make the dump?” Warrick asks.

“American-made, 1980s, red interior,” Sara says. “That’s all Hodges could give us.”

Catherine and Warrick nod, and, for a few moments, silence permeates the room while they mull the case information and Grissom and Sara eat their food, everyone carried away into thought. But then Sara feels something nudge her leg beneath the table.

Grissom.

At first she thinks the touch is an accident of proximity. But then another touch and him looking at her intently, his eyes still impossibly blue. He maintains a neutral expression, but his attention in unmistakable. He is continuing what she started with her quip about his many secrets. Upping it. Sara tries her best not to grin and give his game away.

Sometimes she thinks about the strangeness of her life with Grissom—all their secrets and omissions and hiding in plain sight—and she almost wants to roll her eyes at the absurdity of it. But sometimes there are moments when Grissom starts playing footsie with her under the table, just because he can, just because he wants to, just because that is what their life is like, and she suddenly feels that the strangeness is, in its own way, wonderful. She stares him down and nudges him back.

“What I want to know,” Warrick says, picking up as if there hadn’t been a break in the conversation, “is what’s up with this Barrow cat and his money. I’m gonna look into him.”

 “And I’m going to go after these unknown numbers,” Catherine says. “Maybe I can get an A.G. waiver, see if I can use Coby’s cell phone provider records to triangulate where she was at the time when she placed her final calls. It might get us closer to a primary crime scene.”

Sara rubs against Grissom’s leg with her own, teasing him. But he retains his neutral expression. “Good,” he says. He reciprocates Sara’s touch under the table. It’s such a reckless, schoolkid game, not even specifically sensual. Just foolish and fun.

“I wanna go back to Jimmy and Coby’s apartment,” Sara says, giving Grissom’s leg another rub. She strains not to smile, knowing that Catherine and Warrick are oblivious. “Nick collected all their records and electronics, but he didn’t know anyone was threatening Jimmy or that Jimmy had opened a safety deposit box. Context is everything.”

“I’ll go with you,” Grissom says. Another touch up her leg.

And so the shuffle of papers and bodies, Warrick finishing his curry and tossing the cup in the trash, heading off to find a quiet corner and computer, Catherine going to work with Archie in AV. Grissom and Sara pick up napkins, disposing of plastic forks and spoons, putting leftovers in the fridge. Soon, they’re alone in the room, and they smile the smiles they had been waiting to smile at each other.

“You,” Sara says, a warning in jest. Grissom needs to watch himself, especially around Catherine, doesn’t he? He and Sara both need to watch themselves, and here he is playing games with her, behaving badly and encouraging her to do so the same.

He looks smug, maybe a bit triumphant, and she wants to throw something at him, but she doesn’t, not here. He starts the coffee maker, taking two mugs out of the cupboard. When she jumps up on the counter to sit beside where he’s working, he doesn’t react as he asks, “Which blend do you want?”

“I trust you,” she says, nudging his leg with her foot.

She smiles more of the smile she wants to smile at him, unable to help herself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter contains material that is NSFW.**

**March 3rd, 2007**

They’re on their way to Owens Avenue, Sara driving, Grissom in the passenger seat, the radio on low volume. Intermittent streetlight and shadows play over the dash. They’ve just exited the freeway and entered a residential neighborhood.

“We should do laundry when we get home,” Sara says, taking a left turn. “Darks, at least. And—by the way—you still need to get your gray suit dry-cleaned before you have to testify on that Durango case next week.”

“Yes, dear,” Grissom says.

A beat. “We should also walk Hank.” Sara pouts her lip in sympathy for their dog. “Poor guy,” she says. “He thought we were gonna take him all the way up that mountain to play in a waterfall. Then he sniffed out those bodies, and all of a sudden, he’s at the sitter’s.”

Grissom smirks. “Ah, yes. The road to doggy daycare is paved with good intentions.”

They stop at a red light, and Sara rolls her eyes at him but also smiles. For a moment, they lapse into silence, reviewing mental checklists of what they’ll need to do once they reach Jimmy and Coby’s apartment and what they’ll need to do once they finally make it home. The song on the radio changes, and Sara turns up the volume, tapping out the beat on the steering wheel. Grissom isn’t familiar. He never is when they listen to her stations. But after an intro, a singer starts in, and Sara suddenly with him.

 _“I'm in the sky tonight,_  
_there I can keep by your side,_  
_watching the wide world riot and hiding out—”_

She keeps her eyes on the traffic light, never looking at Grissom. Usually when she sings, she does so unthinkingly, unaware of herself. So often over their last year of living together, Grissom has caught a snatch of her voice coming from another room and found her somewhere in the condo folding towels or studying criminology journals with her headphones on, singing along to music she can hear but he can’t. If she notices he’s listening to her, she inevitably expresses embarrassment, apologizing for her voice. But Grissom likes her voice and likes the way she sings as much as he likes the way she talks. Now is one of the rare times when he senses that she is singing while she is conscious of it and knows that he is listening—when she maybe even wants him to listen—and it feels like a gift. Without a word, he reaches across the center console to take her free hand. She doesn’t stop singing when he touches her, and then he knows for certain: this is purposeful. She sings to the chorus and then is quiet, but he feels the pulse in her hand, quick for a long time afterwards. Flighty, like the wings of a bird.

They arrive at Jimmy and Coby’s apartment complex just after one in the morning. Nick had gotten a key to the unit from the landlady earlier in the day, and they use it to let themselves inside, past the police tape and barriers. Even after over twenty years on the job, Grissom still feels some reverence, entering homes where persons now dead once lived—and perhaps especially so in cases where the persons left their homes the final time without realizing that they would never return. There is always a sense of suspended animation, of the small, day-to-day acts of living left forever uncompleted.

Here, in Jimmy and Coby’s tiny one-bedroom: a blanket strewn over the sitting room couch cushions, left in disarray after a final television program or movie watched; a plate with stale sandwich crumbs still sitting out on the counter from a last lunch; a jean jacket slung over the back of a kitchen chair, intended for a next outing that will never happen; a calendar tacked beside the refrigerator, still turned to January, the first week and a half of the month crossed off, the words “DATE NIGHT!!!” written in bubble letters on Friday the 12th, untouched. There is evidence, too, of Nick’s presence: dust outlines on the counter where he collected bills and letters; cupboards and drawers slightly ajar, their contents sifted through; the pockets on the jean jacket turned out, checked for a cellphone that wasn’t there. But beyond Jimmy and Coby’s living and Nick’s searching, there is nothing. No signs of struggle, no evidence to suggest a crime. Jimmy and Coby didn’t die here. This place is not the primary.

Grissom joins Sara in the sitting room, where he sees her pick up a framed photograph off the entertainment hutch. When she notices his attention on her, she shows him the image: a close shot of Jimmy with his arms wrapped around Coby from behind, both of them smiling widely, the lights from the Fremont Street Experience electric behind them, their eyes trained up at a camera Coby holds above their heads. Coby’s belly isn’t visible in the photograph, but she seems to be retaining water in her face—at the tip of her nose and in the rounds of her cheeks—so Grissom deduces that she is pregnant. Both she and Jimmy look very young and very happy.

“All of the pictures they have in here are just of them,” Sara notes, gesturing to a handful of other photographs displayed around the sitting room and adjacent kitchen: Jimmy standing in front of a hot rod, holding a strong man’s pose; Coby planted cross-legged beneath a tiny, synthetic Christmas tree in the same corner of the sitting room where Grissom and Sara currently stand, the tree decked out in colored lights, Coby with a gift wrap bow on her head, giving the camera a thumbs-up; more self-taken images of the two of them in front of the Luxor pyramid, Vegas Vic, the Bellagio fountain, and other Strip landmarks. “No friends, no family. Not even any photos of Jayden.” She sets the framed photograph back on the entertainment hutch. “It’s sad that they were so alone.”

“They had each other,” Grissom offers.

He hadn’t intended to comment on anything but Jimmy and Coby’s situation, but his words overreach, somehow, and both he and Sara realize it. He understands what she means, of course: that two kids left the reservation, eager to start a new life in the city, only to lose their baby, their jobs, and eventually their lives, all within a few short years; that maybe things wouldn’t have happened that way if only someone had been looking out for them. But she seems to understand what he means, as well: that sometimes all it takes is one person to keep someone from feeling entirely alone in the world; that sometimes, having someone is everything. That, for them, it is. Her look to him is deep and fervent—she agrees, feels the same.

Within the next few minutes, they begin their search in earnest, going first to the back bedroom and fanning out from there. They don’t know what in particular they are looking for except anything that might tell them the identity of Jimmy and Coby’s mystery creditor or which might reveal to them what object or objects Jimmy locked in his safety deposit box at the bank. They look in all the usual places where people keep their secrets hidden: under the mattress, at the back of the closet, in the air vents and nightstand drawers, and under loose tiles in the bathroom. Sara finds Coby’s diary, Coby’s entries ended long before the date of her and Jimmy’s disappearance. Grissom opens the door behind which Jimmy and Coby’s water heater resides and discovers a wrapped gift box: a birthday present Coby had bought for Jimmy and was waiting to give to him come May; a pocketknife with his initials etched into the hilt.

Though there is no sign of struggle anywhere, Sara wonders if maybe the mystery creditor might have visited the apartment at any point. Considering that Jimmy and Coby lived such an insulated life, she suspects that any prints in the apartment that do not belong to either them or their landlady could potentially belong to him, and so she begins dusting doorknobs and counter surfaces.

Grissom unearths a box from the closet containing what seems to be Jimmy’s inheritance from his father: some tribal heritage certificates, an heirloom belt made from antelope hide and cliffrose bark with intricate beadwork along the seams, a rosary, and a baseball glove with the words “C. BLANCHETT” written on the thumb in permanent ink. Nowhere in the box are any military items, which surprises Grissom, given that, according to Greg’s background report, Caleb Blanchett was the recipient of several awards and medals of valor for his contributions during the Gulf War. One might expect to find his commendations retained somewhere. The gun case for his service sidearm is likewise missing.

Wondering if perhaps Jimmy and Coby kept the gun hidden somewhere sans its case for easy access, Grissom performs a chemical test on the underside of their mattress and at the back of their closet that will detect the presence of chromium steel, a common alloy found in gunmetal. The test comes up negative, which doesn’t necessarily prove that the gun was never in the locations Grissom tested, though it does mean that it is unlikely that it was.

Having found nothing probative in the back rooms of the apartment, Sara starts on the sitting room and Grissom the kitchen. Their work is silent and quick but thorough: they rifle through each storage bin and hamper, unscrew the light fixtures to check inside the penchant shades for hidden objects, leaf through old notepads, and sort the takeout menus and coupons they find magnetized to the fridge.

It is after three in the morning when Sara perks up. “I think I’ve got something,” she says. She holds up an object from the bookshelf beside the window: a gourmet cookie tin, recycled to hold bric-a-bracs. From the tin, she produces a single key on a ring. She reads the engraving on the key head, “‘WF 29871J.’”

“Well, that certainly sounds like a safety deposit box account number,” Grissom says. 

He resumes reading over the front page of a notepad he pulled off the kitchen fridge, eyeing a brief grocery list written in Coby’s hand and then—

“I got something, too,” he says. He holds up the notepad, pointing to a name and phone number scrawled beneath the grocery list in Jimmy’s handwriting. Sara comes over beside him to see, brushing up against his body.

“‘Al Kinney,’” she says, taking in the name. She eyes the phone number, and, after a few seconds, seems to recognize it. “Wait, isn’t that—?”

“The unknown phone number that kept calling Coby before she died,” Grissom confirms.

“Hello, new person-of-interest.”

She has one hand on Grissom’s shoulder, the rest of her pushed up against him from behind, so at first he thinks it is her touching him when he feels something move at his leg. But no. His phone is vibrating in his pocket. She feels it at the same time he does and steps back, allowing him to answer.

Warrick.

“Hey, Grissom. I just got done running background on Rick Barrow. Get this: He wasn’t just Jimmy’s boss—he was his godfather. He and Jimmy’s dad, Caleb, went to high school together and joined the Army at the same time, had the same recruiting officer, were in the same battalion, served together in the war. I found some military records, and Caleb even saved Rick’s life in Kuwait in ’91. Was awarded the Silver Star for it and everything.”

“That’s curious,” Grissom says, “considering that we haven’t found the Silver Star anywhere in Jimmy and Coby’s home.”

Warrick grunts in acknowledgment. Then. “What kind of guy fires his best friend’s kid from working at his shop after the kid’s baby dies? I mean, his own godson?” he says. “Seems a little callous.”

“Brass is still working on hunting him down,” Grissom says. “Sara and I have an i.d. on the unknown caller who was in contact with Coby in the months leading up to her death. Guy’s name is Al Kinney. Got his name on a notepad.”

“So you guys gonna head back?” Warrick asks.

Grissom checks with Sara for confirmation. She nods. “Yeah,” Grissom says. “We’re just finishing up here. Should be back soon.”

“Roger that,” says Warrick, ending the call.

Grissom and Sara bag the key and the notepad and pack up their kits, re-securing the crime scene before they take their leave. When they exit the quadraplex, it is cold outside, any lingering day heat that had settled into the earth long since evanesced. There are cop sirens in the distance, sounds of city noise. Grissom goes to the passenger side of the Denali, Sara to the driver, both of them moving on habit.

Grissom first learned that Sara loved to drive on the day he met her in San Francisco. Her questions after his lecture had kept them until a janitor came to close down the auditorium for the afternoon, and so they had taken a walk through the city, wanting more space to talk, more avenues down which to learn each other.

Their conversations meandered with them, ranging from the merit of a fire evidence recovery lecture they’d both sat through earlier in the day; to what types of objects Bay Area seagulls will and will not steal from tourists; to Joachim-Ernst Bernard’s theory on the vibrations of all fundamental matter, the universe as sound and music, human beings as its perceivers; to meteor showers; to fingerprint dusting; to third-wave feminism; and, suddenly, to what Sara did for fun if she ever had a day off.

Back then, Grissom had mistaken her deflections for sheer diffidence, for her not wanting to make the conversation one-sided. He had persisted in asking because he had wanted to know—had wanted to memorize her passages like a new favorite book—because he had felt such a keen ache for her nestled beneath his breastbone, until finally she had said she liked to sometimes just get in her car and drive. To where, he had asked her. Just anywhere, she’d said. Away. She had talked about the seaside roads through Sausalito, past San Pablo, all the way to Napa, with something close to reverence. The colors and the water, but mostly being free.

He remembers her, leaned against a chain barrier fencing one of the paths to Marshall Beach, the setting sun behind her, her dark glasses on, her face almost in silhouette—how even then, he had had the impression that she was running away from something, though he hadn’t known what. How even then, he had loved her, though he hadn’t known yet to call it love. How he had wanted her to stop running. Wanted her to stay there with him.

It wasn’t until a few months ago that Sara told Grissom that she almost hadn’t learned to drive, except that a foster brother—a biological son of the family she was staying with at the time, just a few months older than she was, who had had a crush on her—had taught her in his Camry, when she was fifteen and a half years old, and he sixteen years old and only licensed for one week.

She hadn’t liked the boy, but she had liked being able to choose something for herself for once, to go somewhere of her own volition. So she had saved up money from her I.L.P. job to pay for a driving test, which she passed on the first try. Her license was her sixteenth birthday present to herself. She didn’t have a vehicle to drive when she was legally emancipated a few weeks later, starting at Harvard on Spring Term, early enrollment on a scholarship. But after two years of scrimping the money she made tutoring frat boys in math, she had bought herself a heavily used 1975 VW Golf, beyond shitty, as she put it, full of holes. And she had loved it.

For so long, Grissom knew Sara, her mannerisms and habits, without knowing any of her stories or the context for what he read in her. The past two years have been a time for telling, for her to mention little things, to slowly unveil what she once kept hidden, and for him to hear her and to learn. He takes her hand again over the console.

“I’ll pick Hank up from the sitter’s,” he says.

Sara shakes her head. “You dropped him off. I can—”

“I don’t mind,” Grissom says. “We’ll meet you at home.” He lifts her hand to his lips and lightly kisses her knuckles as they stop at a red light.

The ride back to the lab isn’t a long one, but sitting still, feeling dreamy about Sara, is enough to lull Grissom into a state of near-reverie. By the time they step out of the Denali back at the lab, his body and mind slump towards sleep, his limbs heavy, reactions sluggish. In the past day and a half, he has slept for less than five hours in total, and he is to the point where even adrenaline and coffee can’t help him much anymore.

Catherine and Warrick find him and Sara admitting the key and the notepad into the evidence locker.

“I triangulated Coby’s calls,” Catherine says. “Her second-to-last call, the one she made to the unknown number? It came from Owens Avenue. Her apartment. But her last call to Jimmy? From right outside Rick Barrow’s foreclosed auto shop.”

“I called Brass,” Warrick says. “We’re gonna head over to Mr. Barrow’s residence again—see if we can’t catch up with him.”

“And I’m gonna follow up on your Kinney lead,” Catherine says. She smirks at him and Sara. “You two look dead on your feet,” she says. “Go home, and go to bed, puh-leaze.”

Ripcord panic snaps in Grissom’s chest. He instantly straightens up. Did Catherine just imply that he and Sara will be going to the same home and sleeping in the same bed together? His pulse throbs in his throat, and he feels Sara flinch at his side, sharing his same wavelength. They stare at Catherine, neither one of them breathing.

But no.

Catherine has already moved on. She’s shepherding Warrick out of the evidence locker with her, running with the case, totally oblivious to the effect her words have had. Her insinuation was entirely grammatical, not intentional. She and Warrick step into the hall, and Grissom and Sara share a look. They have yet to go a week without experiencing a scare, and Catherine is the coworker who most often gets them going.

“What a day,” Sara says, and she isn’t talking solely about the case. She smiles at Grissom, looking just as tired as he feels. “I guess I’ll see you.” And she exits the evidence locker, too.

Nearly twenty-four hours have passed since she and Grissom were on the mountain, hiking with their dog, oblivious to what they were about to find. So much has happened since then that it almost feels like another life, like something Grissom has read about in a book or that happened to him in a dream. He slides his hand over his face, rubbing the bleariness from his eyes. He counts out a few beats, waiting, and then follows Sara to the locker room, ready for them to go home.

• • • 

They perform the silent, awkward dance, the choreography they’ve so often practiced over the last two years: hanging their vests in their lockers, gathering their things, keeping to themselves as they pretend that they’ll be driving separate roads to separate homes, parting ways until next shift. Sara allows Grissom to finish his steps first.

“Goodnight,” he says, though he means he’ll see her soon.

“Goodnight,” she says, though she means that she’ll be waiting up for him, like usual.

Her thoughts on her drive home are a mishmash: images of Jimmy and Coby smiling in photographs, changed out for memories of their hollowed, weatherworn bodies on the mountainside; sensory details like the clarity of the air in the canyon and the bubblegum scent of Texas Rangers mingled with replays of her and Grissom’s interactions, her hand in his while they were driving, the way he shared his lunch with her in his office, his quiet attention focused on her all throughout the day.

When she arrives home, she flips on every light in the common areas and starts the laundry, yawning as she tosses her shirts and Grissom’s socks into the machine. She’s in the kitchen running water into a tea kettle when she hears keys and claws scratching at the front door. She has only enough time to look up before the door is open and Hank is scrabbling against the sitting room floor, impatient for Grissom to take him off his lead. He knows better than to bark inside the condo, but he’s panting, eager to run. He wears his widest doggy smile, like he did when Sara returned to him on the mountainside.

“Hey,” Sara says, switching off the faucet.

Grissom removes the lead from Hank’s collar, and Hank bounds across the living room, pattering down the few steps into the kitchen in a rush. Sara crouches beside the sink to meet him, and he runs, whimpering, into her arms, licking her hands and wrists as she pets him, his whole body wriggling with adoration and excitement. Grissom is slow to join them, hanging his jacket in the closet, setting his kit in its place near the door. He wears amusement tucked at the corners of his smile, watching from the top of the steps as Sara pets Hank into a subdued stupor.

“You need to cool it,” Sara tells Hank, rising to wash her hands in the sink, “or you’re going to blow our cover one day.”

Grissom descends the steps. “MRI resonance shows that when a dog sees or smells his owner, it evokes a reward response in the receptors of the brain and releases oxytocin into his system. Hank’s, uh, enthusiastic response to being reunited with you suggests that he associates you with feelings of security and having his needs met. As a pack animal, he craves companionship, and you complete his pack. Without you, he’s lonely.”

The implications of Grissom’s trivia aren’t lost on Sara as Grissom comes up behind her at the sink, taking her by the shoulders and massaging his thumbs against a knot at the base of her neck that she didn’t even know was there. Once, twice, three times. She relaxes into the strength of his touch, and he brushes back the hair at the side of her face. His lips find her pulse, just below her jawbone, and his arms slide down her body, wrapping at her waist. Heat upon heat. She shuts off the water, dries her hand on the dishrag, and turns in his embrace, setting her hands against his chest, playing over the buttons on his shirt. She kisses him on the mouth— _I missed you, I love you, welcome home_.

“You started the laundry,” Grissom observes, picking up on the sounds from the machine.

“Mhm-hm. I threw the pillowcases in there, too,” Sara says.

She is well aware that laundry is not the most romantic subject two people could discuss while kissing each other hello, but she doesn’t mind at all. For most of her life, she thought she would never get to have this with anyone: these almost trite domestic exchanges, talking over chores and household projects and little necessities of the day-to-day. To have it now—and to have it with Grissom—is wonderful to her beyond the telling of it. She kisses him again, and when he quirks an eyebrow, asking what for, she smiles at him. No reason. Every reason. Just because, just because.

While she finishes making the tea, Grissom sets out breakfast on the kitchen island. Neither one of them is very hungry yet after the Indian food they ate at work, so it’s just cereal and yogurt, not any of the fancier stuff Grissom is capable of preparing. They’re both exhausted, but they still make conversation while they eat.

“How are you enjoying Emerson?” Grissom asks.

“I was just browsing,” Sara says. “But it holds up.”

The exchange is two of their favorite games in one: Grissom showing off his powers of perception, Sara repeating his own words back to him. He must have somehow noticed that she had taken his book off the shelf and put it back again when he stopped at the condo between the mountain and the lab this morning. She remembers him telling her how Thoreau held up when he reread _Walden_ leading up to his sabbatical. He probably shouldn’t notice so much of what she does. She probably shouldn’t remember so much of what he says. They smirk at each other, at a draw.

Grissom mentions that there’s an Ansel Adams exhibit coming to the Bellagio Gallery and asks Sara if she’d like to go with him to see it. His question gets them talking about a photography class Sara audited in graduate school and, from there, about the continuing education photography classes they both have to take as C.S.I.s, photography in general, and memorable photographs. Grissom reveals to Sara that his mother used to make him part his hair and wear a bow tie every year on grade school picture day.

“I looked like the six year-old version of Robin Day,” he says.

Sara teases him. “Like who?”

The washing machine beeps around the time they’re rinsing their dishes at the sink. They don’t have a full laundry room in their condo, just a nook with the washer and dryer in it, located adjacent to the kitchen, which functions just as well. Sara jumps up to sit on the dryer while Grissom switches their wet clothes and linens between the machines.

“I want to do a photo shoot with Hank sometime—like a nice one, set up,” she tells him.

Grissom smirks. “Are you going to make him wear a bow tie?”

Sara laughs. “Maybe. Maybe I should take pictures of both of you wearing bow ties. We could send them to your mother.”

Grissom rolls his eyes. “She’d love that.”

He closes the dryer door, and Sara turns on the cycle before hopping down from her perch.  

“You should show me your school pictures someday,” Sara tells him.

“She has them all,” Grissom says, picking up the empty laundry basket off the floor and setting it atop the washing machine. He pauses, considering something. Then. “Maybe, uh, you could come with me sometime to California. See where I, um, grew up. Look at Mom’s pictures.” A pause. “Meet her.” He doesn’t look Sara in the eyes when he offers the invitation.

Grissom attempts nonchalance, as if he had just asked Sara to accompany him to another photography exhibit rather than home to Marina del Rey to meet his mother. But Sara can see how nervous he is to make the invitation, and she feels a flitter of butterflies for it. No previous boyfriend, if boyfriend is even the right word to describe what Grissom is to her, has ever wanted to bring her home to meet his mother before. She had never imagined that Grissom might want—that he would be comfortable—that he felt so strongly that—

His words tug at something tender and deep in her chest, almost aching. She wants to say how much it means to her that he would lead her past that final partition into his private life. She wants to tell him that she has never felt more trusted by anyone, more valued. She wants to say that she doesn’t know much about being a part of a family, but she’s learning from him. She wants to admit that for as much as the prospect of meeting his mother terrifies her, the fact that he thinks good things would come from them meeting gives her enough confidence to do it. She wants to promise him that she would go with him anywhere, follow him everywhere. She wants to say the words she always feels for him but is seldom brave enough to say aloud—that they've never said outside their bedroom.

But instead, in a small voice.

“Okay.”

“Yeah?” he says, finally meeting her eyes.

“Yeah. I’d like that.”

In his moments of excitement, Sara can see the little boy still in Grissom despite his gray: like right now, when he is breathless, all blue eyes and a lopsided smile; he would only need a bow tie to be back in one of his mother’s pictures. His thrill stokes hers, and she reaches out to take his hand over the washer, giving it a squeeze. God knows when they might ever get the chance to both take a long weekend and go to California together, let alone when his mother might be up to hosting them. But it is a beautiful someday thought, a happy possibility.

They take Hank for a walk around the neighborhood beneath the first blush of morning twilight. By now, they’re so tired that they’ve lapsed into quiet. Grissom holds the leash, Sara Grissom’s free hand. She walks very close to him because she feels very close to him, and he doesn’t seem to mind. The elderly residents who live on the first floor of their building are already awake for the day and sitting out on patios by the time they return. The old men wave to them, and the old women raise up Saturday mimosas, everyone in silhouette under the purple shade before the dawn. Grissom nods acknowledgment and smiles, and Sara lets it be a greeting from them both. She doesn’t let go of his hand in the elevator—only when they reach their own door and he has to let them inside, to home, to privacy, to sleep.

And so another dance, this one comfortable, with no pretense of inattention: readying for bed, showing Hank to his throw in Grissom’s study, closing the bedroom shutters to create artificial dark, peeling back the covers, Sara lying her head on Grissom’s chest, listening to his heart, Grissom with his arm wrapped around her body. It is nearly seven o’clock.

Though Sara is physically exhausted, her mind still runs on images from the day, on exchanges with Grissom, on lingering questions about the case. These last thoughts bed down with her, staying. Grissom must somehow notice, because, after a moment, he takes her free hand in his and kisses the crown of her head.

“What are you thinking?” he asks—a favorite question.

They have an unspoken rule that they don’t discuss cases at home, that they leave work at work. Usually, she would never break it. But. “I’m just thinking”—a breath—“I’m just thinking about how no one went looking for them,” she says. She uses _them_ instead of names in case he wants to pretend they’re not talking about work in bed. “They’ve been missing for two months, and no one realized it. Not her mother, not his godfather. That’s just—” She doesn’t know what she wants to say. There is a tightness in her chest about it.

Grissom strokes at the soft space between her thumb and forefinger with his own thumb. He kisses her hair again. For a long while, he is quiet, and Sara thinks he might not want to have this conversation. But. “Before—,” he says. A breath. “Before we were—and before I got Hank—I, uh, used to wonder what would happen if I died alone in my apartment. Had a heart attack. How long it would have taken someone to notice. If, uh, it would have been a neighbor who smelled the decomp that got someone to me first, or if someone I knew might’ve—” He shrugs, and Sara rises and falls with the movement of his shoulders, still rested on his chest.

The morbidity of his statement isn’t what strikes her. “If you hadn’t shown up to work,” she says, “I mean, Catherine would have been over here—”

“—after the first shift I missed.”

“Yeah. All your paperwork going on her desk? Come on. And I would’ve—I would have noticed. Would’ve missed you. Even if we’d been fighting.” A pause. “I used to wonder the same thing, though. I mean, about who would find me, if I ever got lost.”

“I would find you,” Grissom says, and she hears, for a second, his heartbeat strain louder beneath her ear. “Even before you moved here. Even in San Francisco. I would have flown there.”

And now the tightness in Sara’s chest has little to do with the case. She had been a lost girl, one of the unlucky ones who couldn’t be placed in kinship care, who had no option for reunification, who got passed around before emancipation, who only made it anywhere because she was resourceful and intelligent and refused to accept the alternative. For so many years, she had no one who gave a damn where she was sleeping at night, no one who checked up on her. There had been people who had promised to care for her, but their promises hadn’t meant anything. They had all gone away, after a time. But Grissom’s promises are different than theirs; she can hear it in his pulse, feel it in his heat. She knows because he has never broken a promise to her before.

She props herself up, finds his lips. For a moment, she hovers above him, now feeling his heart instead of hearing it, his pulse quick like a kick through water, a swish rather than a thump. She kisses him deep and slow through the dark, her jaw working, and he reaches up, thumbing along the edge of her mouth, drawing it further open, the way a subtle shift in season will cause a flower to bloom. Anthesis.

Their kissing wets, and she tastes the inside of his mouth, familiar. His other hand runs down her side, pets over her ribs, and comes to rest on the stretch of skin exposed between the hem of her shirt and the waist of her pants. She takes his hand as a sign and moves to straddle him, but he shifts instead, a gentle rebuff. Turns her over while they are still connected to each other at the mouths. Now her back is on the mattress, her hair laid out over her pillow, and he is above her, still kissing her, slick, still kissing her, deep, still kissing her, slow. He keeps one hand at her jaw, the other holding her waist, but strokes over her skin with him thumb, asking permission to proceed, as he always does, as his respect for her conditions him to do. She nods into their kiss. “Yeah”—her voice barely above a whisper.

The heat Sara has felt for him in waves all day gathers everywhere under her skin, a single, waiting charge. His hand slips below bands and beneath fabric to touch her, and she hums against his mouth and feels him smile like he had just learned how—as if it were a new trick for a new happiness. She runs her fingers through his hair, keeps kissing him, her kisses turning sloppier as she tunes to his motion.

She knows a secret which she could never tell to anyone, which is that he likes most of all to touch her, more even than to search for any touch for himself. He likes to feel her move, and so she moves. He likes to hear her breathe, and so she breathes. She says his name—“Gil”—against his lips, and he touches her more urgently, until her muscles seize around his fingers, and the charge unfolds. Heat lightning, everywhere. Momentarily, she is insensible, aware only of his presence and nothing else, and she feels him and his promises written, lush and bright inside her. His lips move from her mouth to the pulse at her neck, and he kisses her wildly while snapshot pleasure flashes across her skin.

“Are you—?” he asks, breathless, near her ear.

“Yeah,” she says. Then. “Do you—?”

He shakes his head, and he means that it is enough for him to know that he has made her feel good. He removes his hand from under her clothes, wraps his arm around the small of her back, and moves her to him as he lies down at her side. They kiss again, and she smiles into it, stupidly, dizzily happy.

Except when double-shifts keep them from home, they make love almost every day, sometimes more vigorously than this, sometimes almost lazily, as they are falling to sleep. Sara knows that they might not always keep this daily ritual—that couples who have been together for many years often don’t—but she hopes, in herself, that they will, because she seldom feels as close to Grissom as she does when she sees how much he delights in making her happy. He is an eloquent and brilliant man, but sometimes he says the most when he’s not speaking, when his thoughts translate to liquid action. She snuggles closer to him on the bed. She can tell that his eyes are open, that he is watching her in outline in the dark.

She kisses his brow. “Sweet dreams,” she tells him in a whisper, and he nods but doesn’t speak, just holding her, just breathing.


	5. Chapter 5

**March 3rd, 2007**

Grissom wakes minutes before the alarm but remains still, with Sara still breathing like sleep in his arms. Hank has come into the room at some point during the last few hours and now curls at the foot of the bed. Though they have the windows shuttered, afternoon sun hints through the slats, casting warmth and light in striations across their quilt, illuminating dust motes suspended midair. Grissom kisses Sara’s shoulder, gentle, and wonders what she’s dreaming.

When the alarm sounds, Hank heads immediately off the bed into the kitchen, and Grissom shifts so that he can silence the beeping. Sara doesn’t move, just says in a scratchy voice, “G’morning,” even though it is nearly two o’clock. Grissom rolls back into his former position, holding her, and she reaches back to set her hand on his face, stroking her thumb along his beard. The motion is awkward for her but pleasant to him.

“Good morning,” he says and kisses her shoulder again.

They shower together, water running in rivulets down their bodies, and then dress in comfortable silence. Soon Grissom stands at the kitchen island, drinking juice and scanning the Isaac Asimov Super Quiz in the newspaper, watching Sara seated at the table in his peripheral vision. She hangs her head between her knees, using a cordless hairdryer, combing her curls flat. Her motions are purposeful and practiced despite the awkwardness of her pose. The whir from the dryer has Hank scared, though it is an everyday sound. He cowers at Grissom’s ankles, whining and concerned.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Sara says, switching off the dryer. She shakes her hair back into place. “See?” She offers him a reassuring smile. Then, to Grissom. “I’ll take him to the sitter’s.”

Grissom doesn’t look up from the paper. “I never realized that you had curly hair until we started living together,” he says.

“I had curly hair when we first met.”

“That was the style back then.” He shrugs. “So did Catherine.”

Sara laughs. “Catherine with a full perm? That I would love to see.”

Grissom sets down the paper and rinses his emptied juice glass in the sink. Despite the fact that they are not due for shift until eleven at night, he and Sara have decided to head back to the lab, wanting to stay on their case now that it’s gathered some momentum. He flanks Sara at the table, bending down to kiss her. Though he expects a peck, she places her hand at the back of his neck, holding him to her longer. Their lips work together for some seconds, and she hums against his skin and smiles.

“I’ll see you in a bit,” she says as they break apart.

Grissom inclines his head to her. _“‘Painful though parting be, I bow to you as I see you off to distant clouds.’”_

“Who is that?” Sara asks him, unfamiliar with the quotation. Grissom doesn’t answer right away. He climbs the stairs and heads across the sitting room to the closet, searching for his jacket. “Not Shakespeare.”

He allows her to puzzle for moment, to rifle through her mental catalogue of potential sources. In his peripheral vision, he sees her furrow her brow, frown a bit. When she looks at him again, he reveals, “Saga-tennō, the fifty-second emperor of Japan.” He zips his jacket. “Japanese history.”

Sara feigns offense. Her jaw drops, and she looks to Hank, who eats placidly out of his bowl beside the kitchen island now that he no longer has anything to fear from the hairdryer. “Can you even believe him?” she asks, her tone one of amusement. Grissom smirks as he gathers up his kit from beside the door. Even when he starts the teasing going and Sara only retaliates, she always takes him somehow by surprise—like the first drop on a rollercoaster, a little swoop in the belly. She shakes her head. “Tell him to go to work, Hank.” Hank continues eating, and Grissom laughs.

Sara blows him a kiss as he steps out the door.

He carries her warmth with him all the way down the elevator and to the parking garage, missing her presence already, and allowing himself to imagine, if only for one moment, how unspeakably nice it might be if they could one day drive into work together, foregoing this strange runaround.

So then: On the way to the lab, he’s thinking, wondering if maybe the killer planted Caleb’s gun on Jimmy’s body, considering that Jimmy does not seem to have been in possession of any of Caleb’s military paraphernalia at the time when he died. Then he is recounting his supervisory obligations to himself: he needs to fill out a five month post-incident report on Greg’s involvement in the Demetrius James case, get Catherine to help him with the backlog on his paperwork, search for more Dell fosters.

This last topic is one that has lingered with him ever since the loss of Officer Kamen at the Tallman residence. He doesn’t think about it constantly, but the concern follows him like a shadow, hanging somewhere just over his shoulder, making its presence known at intervals. He needs more information, but the family court system is unyielding. Sara has told him: the bureaucratic yellow tape surrounding case files is strung so thick that she wouldn’t even be able to reconnect with her old foster siblings, if she wanted to. And for outsiders, it’s worse—even in law enforcement.

They’ve gotten a few breaks so far, in the form of private information accidentally admitted into public records, hits on Google queries, dates and names tucked away in the detritus of Ernie Dell’s home, which is now considered a crime scene, but nothing substantial. Nothing that is enough. A new body could drop any day, and all Grissom has are a few scattershot potential leads and a worn VHS recording of a child’s birthday party.

He goes immediately to Catherine and Warrick once he arrives at the lab, and they tell him what they’ve accomplished overnight.

Warrick and Brass finally caught up with Rick Barrow and interviewed him at P.D. According to Barrow, he loved Jimmy like a son and promised to look after him when Caleb committed suicide. When Jimmy and Coby moved to Vegas before Jayden’s birth, Barrow employed Jimmy at his shop. He claims that Jimmy was never a good mechanic—always clumsy with his tools—but it was only after Jayden’s death that he had no choice but to let Jimmy go. He says that Jayden’s death really did a number on Jimmy, who started bailing on his shifts and sobbing in the break room between tune-ups. Barrow worried that Jimmy might go the way of his old man, so he fired him in order to give him some space to get his head straight.

Of course, Warrick didn’t buy Barrow as the concerned godfather or the firing as merciful, so he asked about the money lending situation. Barrow said he gave Jimmy and Coby the $10,000 as a gift, never expecting them to pay it back. In his words, Jimmy's old man saved his life, and what's a little cash compared to that? Besides, he felt bad for having to let Jimmy go, so he considered the money a severance package, of sorts.

Warrick asked him about the additional $20,000 in loans, but he claimed not to have any idea where those deposits came from. All he knows is that Jimmy came to him in 2005, asking for cash, and he didn't have cash to give, so he said no. He and Jimmy argued, and he hasn't seen either Jimmy or Coby since then. He claims he has no idea why Coby placed her final call from near his shop, as he lost ownership of the place eleven days prior to the date when she did so, and the premises were boarded up once he vacated them. He also claims to have spent January 11th in the company of a woman who is now his ex-girlfriend, but so far Warrick hasn’t been able to verify his alibi.

Now Warrick wants to know why Coby placed her final call to Jimmy from the shop.

While Warrick was with Brass talking to Barrow, Catherine did some homework on Al Kinney and found that he is a Vegas bookie and moneylender with several priors for aggravated assault, extortion, and breaking and entering.

“Guy has a reputation around the Alphabets for being a ruthless collector,” she says. “I had P.D. put out a BOLO on his vehicle, and Brass is out there trying to track him down. So far, he’s got nothing. Guy’s slippery.”

Grissom says, “If he turns out to be the source of the $20,000 loans, that makes him a suspect in Jimmy and Coby’s murder.”

Catherine and Warrick leave Grissom with their reports and head home for the night, and he checks on his finger rehydration project but finds it still percolating. With Nick and Greg not slated to come in until start of shift and Sara still on her way, he retreats to his office to read over Catherine and Warrick’s notes, familiarizing himself with their case progress. A particular exchange from the Barrow interview transcript catches his attention:

_13:12 JB: So if you loved Jimmy Boy so much, why’d you fire him?_

_13:13 RB: Just because I loved him didn’t mean he was good for business. Kiddo was a lousy mechanic. He was a leftie. Couldn’t hardly use most of the tools in the shop. Even on a good day, he was slower than anyone else on the floor. Took an hour to finish an oil change, and I had a twenty minute guarantee special running, you know?_

Barrow goes on to talk about Jimmy’s depression in the wake of Jayden’s death—but that’s not what interests Grissom, who is circling back to questions of positioning and laterality.

The positioning of the M9 beside Jimmy’s body suggests that whoever staged the crime scene knew that Jimmy was left-handed, which perhaps indicates familiarity between Jimmy and his killer. Rick Barrow certainly knows about Jimmy’s left-handedness, but he claims to have an alibi. What about Al Kinney? Would he have known?

These questions stick with Grissom even once Sara arrives at the lab and she and Sofia find him, carrying with them a warrant to open the safety deposit box at Jimmy and Coby’s bank. The three of them make the drive to Owens Avenue together, and, when they arrive at the bank, the branch manager—a Mr. Rodney Huang—meets them in the lobby. Sofia makes introductions and presents Mr. Huang with the warrant. He takes a long time poring over the document, considering every item, and Grissom and Sara stand awkwardly with their kits, waiting.

“I’m sorry to be so particular about the paperwork,” Mr. Huang apologizes. “Our control policy regarding safety deposit boxes is very strict. Typically, we can only open boxes for a renter or next-of-kin as specified in a renter’s will.”

“Well,” Sara says, “law enforcement can seize safety deposit box contents as abandoned property relating to missing persons cases, so—” She’s impatient to start processing, and Grissom isn’t the only one who notices.

“Of course, of course,” Mr. Huang says, indicating that he is only explaining the bank’s position and doesn’t mean to be contrary. “With the paperwork all set, I’m really very happy to help you out. I just had to check everything and make sure it was in order.” He hands the warrant back to Sofia and gestures for Sofia, Grissom, and Sara to follow him behind the counter and to the safe room. “No one has opened this box since Mr. Blanchett first rented it and made his deposit,” he explains.

“All the better for us,” says Grissom.

They step inside the safe room: a small, windowless, chrome space, with locker doors on every wall, stacked from the floor to just above eye-level. “Our bank uses a dual control system,” says Mr. Huang, searching down the rows for the appropriately numbered locker. “Under typical circumstances, we would require both a bank key and Mr. Blanchett’s key to open the box—”

“We do have Mr. Blanchett’s key, if you need it,” Sofia offers.

“—but thankfully we keep a master key for use in circumstances such as this one.”

He stops at a particular locker: 29871J. In short sequence, he opens the locker, revealing the safety deposit box inside, and Sara snaps two quick photos. He then takes the safety deposit box to a raised table at the center of the safe room and uses his master key to open its double locks, stepping back to allow Grissom to be the one to remove the box lid. Sara stands at Grissom’s left side, and Sofia at Sara’s left side, the three of them crowded together.

Since Jimmy and Coby owned nothing of value, by worldly standards, Grissom can only imagine what they might have placed in a safety deposit box when they were under duress. Perhaps something sentimental: Caleb’s military paraphernalia or mementos from Jayden’s brief life. Whatever they couldn’t have borne to part with, had their creditor come to collect everything from them. But Grissom needs something probative rather than sentimental. He holds his breath and feels Sara do the same at his side.

When he removes the lid, he finds that the box houses three items: an older model cellular phone, a phone charger, and a folded sheet of paper. He glances at Sara, who snaps two more quick photos before setting her camera aside and reaching down with gloved fingers to pluck the folded paper from the box. She unfolds the paper like reverse origami, revealing a note, written in Jimmy’s hand.

_“If I, James Blanchett, and/or my fiancée, Coby Ohte, goes missing, listen to my messages and read my texts to find who did it.”_

Silence while each investigator waits for the other two to finish reading. Then, after a second, Sara scoffs, incredulous, and shakes her head, as if she can’t believe what she’s seeing. “Jimmy left us a cell phone full of info about who his killer is?”

Sara looks to Grissom for his reaction, and he can’t help himself: “Assuming that Jimmy wasn’t mistaken about who was trying to kill him, I guess you could say that we have the killer’s number.”

• • • 

They’re exiting the bank when Grissom stops to take a call from someone whom Sara quickly identifies as Brass. She listens in at Grissom’s side and hears Brass say that they’ve found Al Kinney’s car in a pay-to-park lot on Fremont Street and that he’ll have it waiting at the C.S.I. garage for them once they get back. After hanging up his phone, Grissom tells Sara he wants her on auto detail, and though Sofia probably thinks that he is giving Sara an order, Sara knows better: he is giving her a present. He knows she loves working vehicles.

“I’ll compare the carpet fibers from Coby’s hair,” she says, barely suppressing a smile.

“Good,” says Grissom. “I’m gonna take the phone to AV.”

On the way back to the lab, an eager mood pervades the cabin in the Denali. Sara occupies the passenger seat, and Grissom sits behind her; she keeps catching him sneaking glances at her in the rearview mirror. She has sunglasses on, so he can’t see her looking back at him.

Sofia stops the Denali at a light and bites her nail, mulling something. “Jimmy must've gotten a new phone, after he put this one in the box, if Coby was calling him on the day of his disappearance."

"Yeah. Kept his old number," Sara agrees.

Then, Sofia again. "In his note, Jimmy called Coby his fiancée. Did we know that?”

“No,” Sara says.

Grissom glances at her in the rearview mirror again. “Must have been a secret engagement,” he says. He stares at Sara for a long, long time, and her skin heats for his attention.

Back at the lab, Sara changes into her coveralls, pulls back her hair, and heads to the garage, where she finds Al Kinney’s vehicle waiting for her, as promised. He drives a 1986 Ford Crown Victoria with a beige exterior and red interior with vinyl seats. Even without having run the samples, Sara can see that the carpet inside the car is a potential match to the fibers from Coby’s hair, per Hodges’s preliminary findings. She can also see that the trunk is certainly spacious enough to fit two bodies, as it were.

Sara starts processing first by taking overall photographs of the car: left side, right side, the four corners, front, rear, tags, VIN plate, and the parking decal visible through the back window. She also takes inside shots: sitting in the driver’s seat, looking at the dash; glove box closed and glove box opened; the instrument panel; back seat; and opened trunk.

For the next several hours, she busies herself searching under seats with a flashlight and mirror; looking through and cataloging the contents of the glove box; swabbing the steering wheel, inside door handles, seat belt buckles, and foot pedals; cutting carpet swatches and sending them off to Trace; fingerprinting the interior of the trunk; and lying on her back on a mechanic’s creeper, combing over every square inch of the vehicle’s undercarriage, looking for plant fibers, insect exoskeletons, and any other evidence that could potentially place Kinney at Fletcher Canyon. She then vacuums the vehicle cabin and trunk and sifts through the contents of the vacuum bag. In all, she finds nothing probative.

Sara has always believed that you can tell a lot about a person based on what you find inside their car—and based on what little she finds inside Al Kinney’s car, she can’t help but think that he is a man with something to hide. Aside from an owner’s manual, registration papers, and an outdated Nevada road atlas crammed into the glove box, he keeps no personal items with him. A strong cigarette odor pervades his car cabin, souring the air, but there is not one cigarette present.

The vehicle appears to have been professionally washed and detailed prior to impoundment: hosed down, vacuumed, wiped clean on every surface. There is nothing stuck to the undercarriage, no fingerprints in the trunk, and no visible stains or discolorations on the carpet, either inside the cabin or inside the trunk.

But Sara isn’t finished processing the car yet.

Red carpeting and upholstery could easily conceal a bloodstain, so her next step is to spray down the interior of the car with Luminol, from the vinyl seats to the foot wells to the inside of the trunk. When she mists over the driver’s seat, a faint blue glow appears along the door paneling near the window, and she immediately snaps photographs to document the reaction.

However, after her initial flare of excitement, she realizes what it is that she sees: not evidence of blood but evidence of excessive cigarette smoke trapped inside an enclosed space. The Luminol reacts to the hydrogen peroxide-based radicals lingering in the smoke residue, producing a false positive. The blue glow appears along the paneling by the window because that's where Kinney holds his cigarettes when they’re not drawn to his lips. She still swabs the illuminated areas and will send the samples to DNA, but she already knows they won’t be a match to Jimmy’s blood, Coby’s blood, or anyone else’s blood, either.

She gets a text back from Trace that the carpet fibers from Kinney’s vehicle are not a match to the ones Greg collected from Coby’s body, and disappointment sinks in her chest like a stone into deep water. She sits down on a bucket and rests her head in her hands.

“That bad, huh?”

She looks up to see Grissom entering the garage, folder in hand. He stops beside her work station—observes what little detritus she collected and sifted through from the vacuum bag; her careful arrangement of the meager contents from the glove box; her lower priority swabs and tape lifts bagged, sealed, and ready for delivery to the appropriate techs.

“The carpet fibers don’t match the ones from Coby’s hair,” she tells him, “and there is no blood, no garage grime, and no trace to prove that Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte were ever in this car, either living or dead, let alone that this car has ever driven anywhere near Fletcher Canyon.”

Grissom takes her news on the dead end in stride. “Well,” he says, “would it make you feel any better to know that Archie made some, uh, discoveries with Jimmy’s phone? Turns out, Jimmy had some threatening messages saved to his voicemail.”

“From who?”

“Al Kinney.”

Sara can’t help but frown. So Al Kinney didn’t transport Jimmy and Coby’s bodies in his car, but he did leave them threatening messages? Does that make him the killer? If so, how can they prove it?

Grissom anticipates her questions. “What’s more interesting than Kinney’s threats,” he says, “are some text messages about money lending, loans, and Al Kinney that were sent to Jimmy back in January of this year. Archie found that Jimmy had the number from which the text messages were sent saved in his phone as Rick Barrow, and guess what? It’s the same as the second unknown number from Coby’s call log—the one she placed her penultimate call to just before she and Jimmy disappeared.”

Sara scoffs. “So Rick Barrow was definitely lying when he said he hadn’t been in contact with Jimmy and Coby since 2005.”

“Oh yeah,” Grissom says. “Archie also got the waiver on Jimmy’s call log. Guess who he was playing phone tag with on January 8th, three days before his disappearance?”

“Rick Barrow.”

Grissom nods. “Indeed.”

“We’re gonna need to talk to this guy again—and check out his car.”

“Sofia is on it.”

With this news from Grissom, Sara runs a quick mental inventory on where they stand with the case:

On the one hand, they have Al Kinney, a known violent offender, who may have lent Jimmy and Coby $20,000 and never received all of it back. They know that Kinney threatened Jimmy and harassed Coby over the phone. However, they cannot place Jimmy and Coby in Kinney’s car, and they have no physical evidence linking Kinney to Jimmy and Coby’s murders. It is possible that Kinney killed Jimmy and Coby and transported them to Fletcher Canyon using a vehicle that they have yet to recover. But, if so, they have no way to prove it as of yet, and Kinney is still in the wind.

On the other hand, they have Rick Barrow, who had a personal relationship with Jimmy and Coby and who lent them $10,000 but claims he never expected to see any of the money back. Barrow has lied to them about his interactions with Jimmy and Coby and was perhaps the last person to have contact with them prior to their disappearance. His alibi for that day has yet to be verified. Still, there is no physical evidence directly linking him to the case, either. The garage grime found on Jimmy’s jeans may have come from his shop—but, even then, the locality doesn’t necessarily prove his guilt.

So they have two potential suspects in the case, both of them equally likely and equally unlikely.

Grissom opens his mouth, about to say something, but then stops, extracting his phone from his pocket. “Grissom,” he says, taking the call. It’s Brass again, Sara can hear. She doesn’t bother to listen in on the conversation, as she knows Grissom will relay the important details to her anyway. Instead, she watches the way his jaw works, the way he stands with one hand in pocket and the other hand holding his phone. She reads him, his mood. She can tell by his posture that the call is good news; something relaxes around his shoulders midway through. He turns to her after hanging up. “They picked up Al Kinney at a sports book. They’re holding him for making threats to commit a crime. Do you want to go with me to speak with him?”

So then she’s gathering up her things, delivering her swabs and lifts to the labs where they’ll be run, changing out of coveralls, letting down her hair, meeting Grissom at his office, walking to P.D. with him. Brass already has Kinney waiting, sitting in the interview room, wearing a scowl and a rust-colored leather jacket straight out of 1975. He is sallow and reeks of tobacco even more so than his car. He must have been smoking just before he was taken into custody. When Brass tells him that Grissom and Sara have come from the Crime Lab to ask him a few questions, he gives a short, harsh laugh.

“Go ahead,” he says, gesturing for them to take seats across from him at the table.

They do so, and Brass perches at the window behind them.

“Mr. Kinney,” Brass says. “Let’s cut straight to it: Did you ever loan money to Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte?”

“Yes, sir, I did,” he says, his words polite but his tone acidic. “I lent those kids $20,000 to pay off some bills, and they agreed to pay me back in monthly installments: $300 at five percent interest.” Then, abruptly. “They were making good on it, too—getting real close to paying it off.”

“But then what happened?” Grissom asks.

More acid, Kinney staring Grissom straight in the eyes without blinking. “They stopped paying.”

“When?” asks Brass.

“November,” Kinney says.

Interviews with career criminals always require an intricate interplay. They involve attention to detail, knowing when to ask questions and what questions to ask, how to phrase things, how to play off the other interviewers present in the room. Kinney understands the system, and he isn’t going to say anything to incriminate himself. Their best bet is to confront him with evidence—to force him to go on the defensive before they can build too much of a case around him.

“Mr. Kinney,” Sara says, “we have records showing that you called Coby Ohte dozens of times between December and January. We’ve also recovered some voice messages from Jimmy Blanchett’s phone—voice messages left by you, in which you make some threats. Nasty ones.”

Kinney scoffs, annoyed. “I run a business, ma’am,” he says, “—a business that requires people to pay me back the money I lend them. Those kids stopped paying, so I had a few words with them. I may have, uh, tried to motivate them to start making their payments again. But all of that was verbal! I never touched either of them.”

“That’s real cute,” says Brass, “but you’re expecting me to believe that, uh—what? You left these kids some mean messages, then just gave up when they told you they couldn’t pay? You’re telling me that you just let them walk away from this? You, who, according to your rap sheet, did some time in Ely for taking a pipe to a guy’s kneecaps because he defaulted on a $1,000 loan to you? Come on, Al! You really think I’m buying you as a guy who’s gonna let Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte off the hook, scot-free? Nah, nah. You didn’t do that! You wouldn’t do that! You went after them.”

“I told you: I never touched them,” Kinney says, enunciating every word.

“So what did you do?” asks Grissom.

“They told me to go to someone else for money.”

“Who?”

“Rick Barrow. I’d, uh, lent money to the guy before—he was the one who told the kids to come to me in the first place. He was their uncle or godfather or whatever. Anyway, he had always made good on his payment plans with me, so I contacted him. Sure enough, he pays the money in December.”

Brass scrutinizes Kinney. “What about January?”

Kinney scoffs again. “January, Barrow says he doesn’t have the money for me—starts whining about how he losing his shop and has backed taxes and yadda-yadda-yadda, asking if I could just give him a little more time. So I admit: I shook him down.”

“And?”

“And nothing,” Kinney says, shrugging. A pause while Brass, Grissom, and Sara stare at him. Then. “Look: I have been loaning money and making collections for a long time. After a while, you get a feel for things. Sometimes, you’ve got a guy by the collar, you’re telling him how things are gonna be, and he’s staring up at you, and you can just tell: He’s got nothing to give you, no matter what you say or do to him. He’s worthless, you know? I know better than to waste my time trying to squeeze blood outta a stone.”

“You're leading us in circles,” Brass says, leaving his perch at the window to come down by the table. He stands at Kinney’s shoulder, speaking directly into his ear. “If you couldn’t get money out of Barrow, and you couldn’t get money out of the kids, what did you do? Just call it a day and go home? Here’s what I’m thinking: After Barrow stiffs you, you go back to the kids and tell 'em that the day of reckoning has come. But then Jimmy Boy tries to pull one over on you: He says he’s got a cellphone stashed in a bank vault that will lead the cops right to your front door if anything happens to either him or Coby. And for about two seconds? You’re actually worried that he’s outsmarted you. But then you get to thinking: This kid and his girl, they’re alone in the world. They’ve got nobody but Barrow, and Barrow knows what you’ll do to him if he opens his mouth. If they go missing, who’s gonna notice? Nobody. And at this point, it’s not about a few thousand bucks. It’s about your rep. Word gets out you let them walk, then everybody’s gonna wanna walk, so you gotta make them an example. So you confront the kids. Jimmy tries to pull his old man’s gun on you, but you disarm him. Shoot him, shoot his girl. Then it’s just a quick trip up the canyon, and you’ve got your problem solved. Nobody’s gonna welsh on Al Kinney after that.”

Kinney’s lip curls into a snarl. “I didn’t kill those kids,” he repeats. “I told you: I wanted their money, and dead kids don’t send cash envelopes.”

“So you’re saying Jimmy really did outsmart you?” Sara pushes. “That he told you about the phone in his bank, so you rolled over?”

By this point, Kinney’s annoyance is physically visible: a vein throbs in his neck, and he glowers between Grissom and Sara on one side of the table and Brass at his shoulder. “All I’m gonna say is to check my credit card statement: I was in Reno for a poker tournament on the day you say they disappeared. I didn’t kill those fucking kids.” He takes in Grissom, Sara, and Brass’s reactions to his revelation: sees them caught unawares. His glower morphs to a sneer. “Now, unless you’re gonna charge me for cussing a kid out over the phone, I would like to be released—” He turns to speak directly to Brass, their faces inches apart, “—if you please, Officer.”

So that’s it: He knows they have no physical evidence linking him to the crime, or otherwise they would have played it. They’ve got nothing else on him for the murders. A smug expression lifts at one corner of his mouth, and he starts to rise from his chair, only to have Brass set a hand on his shoulder, keeping him in place.

“I won’t hold you on the threats,” Brass concedes, “but you’ve got some unpaid traffic fines, and, those, I am holding you for. So stay here, pal. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Jesus Christ,” says Kinney, but Brass is already exiting the room with Grissom and Sara.

“That gonna give you time enough to come up with something on this guy?” Brass asks, closing the door behind them as they step out into the hall.

“I don’t know,” Grissom says, frowning. “If his alibi checks out, then he might not be our guy.”

Brass looks incredulous. “Come on, Gil,” he says. “You don’t think it’s within this guy’s character to have killed those kids and stuffed their bodies in a gully halfway up a mountain?”

“Maybe,” Grissom allows. “But we have no proof to say that he did.”

“Plus, since Kinney knew about the cellphone, he had reason to fear exposure,” Sara says. “He didn’t have much to gain by killing them, but he did have a lot to lose.”

“So you’re both thinking Barrow, then?” Brass surmises.

“I’m thinking,” Grissom says, “that we need to get inside the auto shop. That’s gotta be our primary crime scene if Coby placed her last call from outside it and Jimmy had undiluted garage grime trace on his pants.”

“Barrow did lie about not having contact with the kids,” Sara says, on Grissom’s same wavelength.

“Okay,” Brass says. “I’ll see about getting you guys a warrant—but in the meantime, I’m still holding Kinney until we can verify his alibi.”

“I’ll get right on it,” Sara says.

• • • 

**March 4th, 2007**

Jimmy Blanchett’s disarticulated fingers look like bottled chili peppers suspended in salt and vinegar solution: long, creased spindles, dark in color, unfurling in their liquid brine. By evening, they should be fully rehydrated, ready for printing. For now, Grissom keeps them under the fume hood, returns to his office and to other tasks, content to wait, as he must.

Nick and Greg have already arrived for the start of their shifts, and Grissom has already sent them out on new assignments, a 245 assault with a deadly weapon on the Strip for Nick and a 459 burglary call in Henderson for Greg. For as much as he would like to keep them on the Blanchett-Ohte case, there are more crimes in Vegas than just one—which is why he is himself catching up on other projects, filling out a memo briefing the D.A. on his Durango case, signing off on Catherine and Warrick’s recent robbery, completing his notes on another double from a few days back.

Around two in the morning, Sofia stops at his door, a document in hand. “I’m still working on tracking down Barrow again,” she says, “but I just turned up something interesting: Apparently, Barrow took out a $50,000 life insurance policy on Jimmy back in November 2006.”

Grissom sets down his paperwork and sits up straighter in his chair. “That’s motive,” he says, and Sofia nods, agreed.

“What’s motive?” asks Sara, appearing behind Sofia.

Sofia hands her the document—a print out of the insurance policy, Grissom infers. Sara reads it quickly. “Funny that Mr. Barrow failed to mention this when we talked to him,” she says.

“Yeah, funny,” Sofia says, shaking her head.

Sara returns the document to Sofia and looks to Grissom. “Al Kinney’s alibi checks out. Not only did he use his credit cards to make purchases at the Atlantis, but I had their Head of Security send me video surveillance from the poker tournament, and Kinney was there all day—and then he played slots on the floor all night. I’ve got him on film at the exact time when Coby was placing her last call outside the auto shop.” Before Grissom can ask the question that has come to mind, she answers it for him. “—and, yes, he stayed in Reno over the weekend. Didn’t get back to Vegas until the 15th, which was a Monday.”

“So there’s no way he’s our guy,” says Grissom.

“—which means that unless this elusive ex-girlfriend of his turns up out of nowhere, Rick Barrow is now our prime suspect,” says Sofia.

“Now we just need to get into Barrow’s shop,” Sara says, “—see if we can find anything.”

“Brass should have us the warrant soon,” says Grissom.

“I’ll tell Brass to release Kinney, and then I’m going on a manhunt,” says Sofia. “We had this guy in P.D. just a couple of hours ago, and we had to let him go. He could be in Mexico by now. I don’t want him to get away.”

Grissom senses her frustration and shares it in a way. However, he also knows that just finding Barrow won’t be enough; they need physical evidence linking Barrow to the crime, proving that he is the killer. Otherwise, everything they have on him is purely circumstantial and won’t be enough to convince the D.A. to file charges.

When Sofia takes her leave, Sara enters Grissom’s office, sitting down across from him at his desk. “So we know Barrow is the second to last person Coby calls before she disappears and that she places her last call from right outside his foreclosed shop. What do you think the chances are that she was meeting Barrow at the shop?” she asks.

“Considering that Barrow lied about maintaining contact with her and Jimmy over the last two years and that he didn’t inform us he had a $50,000 life insurance policy out on Jimmy? I’d say good,” Grissom says. “Maybe Coby meets with Barrow, gets into trouble with him, and calls Jimmy. Jimmy shows up at the shop, then Barrow kills both him and Coby to collect the life insurance on Jimmy and get the witness out of the way.”

“Maybe thinking he could use the money to pay Kinney—or to get his shop back and pay his own debts?” Sara offers.

Grissom nods. Seconds pass, and he and Sara lapse into silence, knowing that now they have nothing to do but to wait for Brass’s call. This moment is like a break in a windstorm—one in which they can catch their breaths and open their eyes, taking brief reprieve before what comes next. They look across the desk at each other, and everything falls strangely silent around them, no beeping fax machines or ringing phones, distant chatter or outside sirens. Just them, with Nick and Greg away on call-outs, Catherine and Warrick at home in bed, Sofia and Brass running another world. Though the door is open, they feel insulated, secluded, like the only two people on earth.

So Grissom reaches across the desk, sets his hand over Sara’s hand, rested on the woodwork. She startles but then gentles to his touch almost at once, surprised at him but clearly pleased. They both cast glances at the hallway, but there is no one in sight. She curls her hand to his like the crest of a wave, twining their fingers, linking them together.

They’ll only risk this touch for a moment, of course. But while they do, they look to each other, and Sara’s eyes are dark and deep, and Grissom feels as tethered to her as he did to start the day and as he hopes to end it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter contains material that is NSFW.**

**March 4th, 2007**

Northtown has its barren, desert lots interspersed with hard city blocks, convenience stores with neon illuminating the barred windows, every bench and bus stop tagged, the doors to the laundromats and bodegas left ajar to compensate for nonexistent swamp coolers and the ancient A/C units that no longer function; but it also has stars in a way the Strip never does, and Sara watches them through the windshield as she drives herself and Grissom to Rick Barrow’s foreclosed auto shop, Brass riding in his unmarked cruiser behind them, and two of his officers in a black-and-white behind him. Catherine and Warrick are set to rendezvous with them at the scene.

“Did you find Polaris?” Grissom asks.

“And Arcturus,” Sara says. “Maybe Vega.” Then. “Did I tell you? I followed up on that Christmas card we pulled out of Ernie Dell’s junk drawer. Traced the address. I talked to a lady in Mason City who said that a former renter of her basement apartment came from Vegas and had Ernie Dell listed as a cosigner on his lease. Said he was a young guy, living with a girlfriend. They moved out about two years ago, but she might be able to get us a forwarding address. Doesn’t know if it would still be good, but it may be something.”

Grissom nods his gratitude. “I’ve got Greg going through those boxes we pulled out of Ernie Dell’s basement,” he says. “So far, he says it’s mostly tax forms, and a lot of them are so faded he can barely read them—”

“—but we might get something.”

“We might.”

So silence and more stars, streetlights illuminating the car cabin and then fading into stretches of dark. Grissom is thinking, Sara knows, considering case details. Over the years, she has learned that he has different modes for his obsessions. The more superficial ones he speaks about often, almost volubly—his chess games and cockroach races, broad knowledge of baseball and concern for dwindling bee populations, the appeal old TV cowboys hold for him and whatever trivia has taken up residence in his mind for the day. The deeper ones, he doesn’t speak about, and that’s his tell: when something truly obsesses him, its measure is in how little he talks about it, not how much.

These are the obsessions Sara sees in him but never hears him speak to. They wear furrows into his brow, make themselves known in the way he sometimes sits at the condo, staring into shadowed corners, paused with pen halfway to paper or fork nearly to lips, caught up in some sudden thought. Sometimes he’ll come home after a long shift, and Sara will have to wash these obsessions off of him in a hot shower, massage them from his muscles, kiss their tightness to softness on his face, close his eyes, coax him down to sleep.

His obsession with the miniature signature case has been this way, not constant but intense whenever he falls into it. Sometimes Sara will be talking with him, and she’ll realize that he is barely participating in their conversation—that he’s touring half-inch scale replicas of crime scenes in his mind, sussing them out, searching to find anything that he may have possibly missed.

Sara knows that she can’t solve the miniature case for him tonight, but maybe she can help him wrap the other case—help him put the bodies from the mountainside finally to bed so that their plight won’t follow him home tomorrow, or follow her home, either.

“What I’m wondering,” she says, no preamble or cuing Grissom that she means to change the subject, “is why Barrow hasn’t filed any claims yet. If he took out the policy and then killed Jimmy hoping to collect on it, why not at least file a missing persons report to get the process started? He can’t get any money until Jimmy is declared dead.”

“He probably didn’t want to incriminate himself,” Grissom reasons, following her thread as if he had been the one to sew it himself. “Maybe he wanted to stay as far away from the case as possible so as not to betray his own involvement.”

Sara frowns. “But in the meantime, shouldn’t he have been worried about Kinney?”

“Not if he knew about the cellphone,” Grissom offers.

Since she started as a C.S.I., Sara has worked with some truly brilliant people—colleagues whose perceptions impress her and whose judgments she absolutely trusts. But nothing quite compares to working with Grissom, who thinks so well and so quickly, who can finish her sentences and see her premises to their logical conclusions. She never works smarter than she does with him.

“So he was lying low,” she says, “biding his time until someone found Jimmy and Coby’s bodies.”

Now it’s Grissom turn to frown. “But he staged it to look like a suicide—and you can’t collect insurance on suicide cases.”

“Unless he knew we’d eventually figure out it was a murder. He might have been hoping that we’d pin this on Al Kinney. Maybe this was a frame job—Barrow taking care of two problems at once. He kills his godson. That’s $50,000 for him and Al Kinney off his back for the next fifty to life.”

“If so, then that’s premeditation.”

“Two counts of first degree murder. Maybe the death penalty.”

So to Rick Barrow’s shop. Catherine and Warrick wait inside their vehicles, idling outside the garage. Warrick waves at Sara as she pulls up beside him in the Denali, and she nods in response. Brass and the black-and-white park beside her. Car doors open, shoes pound pavement, and car doors slam shut, in concert. Everyone convenes outside the entrance to the garage, the C.S.I.s with kits in hand, the officers with their flashlights lit.

There is a large padlock and thick chain on the door, meant to deter would-be breakers and enterers, but Brass’s officers make quick work of it with their top grade, hydraulic bolt cutters, snapping through the links and snaking the broken remnants off the door handle. Procedure says that they go inside first to clear the premises, so they do, and Grissom, Sara, Catherine, and Warrick stand outside, listening for their signal.

“According to Rick Barrow,” Warrick says, “nobody’s been inside this place since New Year’s Day.”

“Well,” says Sara, “it doesn’t seem like anybody entered through this door, but there are other ways to get into a closed up shop than through the front entrance.”

Grissom huddles beside her, very close and looking steely. “I want everything processed, floor to ceiling. If this is our primary crime scene, we need something definitive that proves it. And if Rick Barrow’s the killer, we’ve gotta do better than incidental. We have to show direct involvement.”

“Good thing I just refilled my powders,” Catherine quips. She winks at Grissom, trying to get him to lighten up, but he is too set on the case and remains on alert at Sara’s side. Petulant, almost.

Some minutes pass, and Brass emerges from the shop, his officers with him. “It’s all clear in there,” he says. “Looks like someone came in through a side door a while back—broke the chain off but didn't have to force the door.”

Grissom quirks an eyebrow. “So whoever broke in didn’t have a key to the padlock but did have a key to the door?”

“Gotta be Barrow,” says Warrick.

Brass nods. “Listen: I’m gonna go out, talk to some of the bums around here, see if any of them noticed anything going on at the shop around the time when Jimmy and Coby disappeared. I’ll leave my guys here. You radio if you need anything.”

Brass’s officers take up their positions, one at this front entrance, the other going around the building, presumably to the unlocked side door, while Brass heads off the shop lot, starting towards an alley, slipping into silhouette beneath the bright streetlights. The C.S.I.s click on their flashlights, and Grissom gestures to the door, allowing Catherine and Sara inside the shop ahead of him and Warrick. They enter directly to the garage, which is dark and spacious, devoid of the usual rolling tool boxes, large jacks, wheel chocks, tire stacks, pumps, cabinets, and spare parts, all its valuable equipment seemingly cleared out at the time of the foreclosure. Now all that remains are a few trash carts and emptied milk crates, plus some more permanent structures: the hydraulic car lifts, cemented to the floor; a few cupboards spaced along the walls; an alcove housing an emptied desk, which was probably once an in-garage office space. There is nothing inside the garage which immediately draws the eye, but there is something strange—something expected that is missing.

“It doesn’t smell like an auto shop in here,” Sara notes.

“Yeah,” says Catherine. “Shouldn’t we be getting motor oil and gasoline?”

Warrick shines his flashlight on the ground. “These floors are really clean, too. No grease stains or garage grime anywhere.”

“And Jimmy Blanchett had garage grime on his pants the day he died,” Grissom says, “so if there was garage grime then but none now—”

“—then somebody’s cleaned up in here,” Sara says, finishing his thought.

No distinctive smells but the faint impression of something chemical and sterile.

“Probably bleached the place,” grouses Warrick.

Sara shakes her head. “Bleach is never good for us.”

So then more exploration. The four C.S.I.s conduct their walk-through together, taking their initial photographs and making preliminary observations along the way. The shop is divided into five main areas: the garage; a reception desk; a small unisex bathroom at the end of the hall; and two back rooms, one of which seems to have been Rick Barrow’s office, the other of which seems to have been a break room for the shop employees.

While the garage has been emptied, the other rooms remain as they were on the day of the foreclosure, with furniture, decorations, and owner and employee items seemingly intact. Everything looks eerie, with the houselights off. There is a potted money tree, dead from thirst, in the reception area; back copies of _Car and Driver_ gathering dust by the chairs in waiting; expired certificates of accreditation displayed behind the front desk; framed posters of muscle cars hanging in the hallway; stacks of papers on Rick Barrow’s desk; napkins and leftover salt and taco sauce packets from fast food meals up for grabs on the table in the break room.

The team opts to divide and conquer: Grissom will take the garage, Catherine Rick Barrow’s office, Warrick the reception area, and Sara the break room and bathroom. Sara knows: she and Grissom have the best chances at finding blood evidence in their areas, him because the garage grime on Jimmy’s jeans would suggest that he was lying on the garage floor at some point just prior to when his body was dumped on the mountain, her because the bathroom would have been necessary for cleanup after the murders. So she starts in the bathroom first.

It is a single, small room: one toilet, one sink, a paper towel dispenser on the wall, an air freshener in the corner, a small trashcan beside the door. She photographs each wall, the door, and all the fixtures. There is no trash in the trashcan, and neither is there a liner. Someone must have taken the trash out.

The floor, sink, and toilet are likewise clean, maybe too much so for an auto shop run entirely by male employees. There are no visible stains in the bathroom—not from urine or waste, car grease, dirt, or blood. Considering that none of the other rooms in the shop aside from the garage appeared to have been cleaned prior to foreclosure, she finds it strange that this room would have been.

Why clean a bathroom no one is going to use? The answer is in the question, of course: You don’t clean it unless someone has used it. There was something here that the person who used this bathroom last didn’t want anyone to see.

She inhales deeply and finds that the air freshener gives off a sweet but fading synthetic scent, though there is also just the hint of chemical sterility and maybe some chlorine underlying it.

Bleach.

Like blood, bleach fluoresces when contacted with Luminol, so Sara opens her kit and produces her Luminol spray. Her best bet is the sink, so that’s where she starts.

Sure enough, once misted, dozens of blue-white smears illuminate the porcelain: tight, concentric circles. Wax on, wax off. She quickly photo documents them and takes a swab, though she knows it won’t yield anything helpful, as whatever blood evidence there was would have been destroyed by the cleaning process. For good measure, she sprays Luminol over the floor and uncovers more bleach smears. Someone mopped up and did so thoroughly. She examines the toilet, uncovers the tank, and checks the paper towel dispenser for any errant smudges or forgotten blood drops. But whoever cleaned up did good. Every surface has been thoroughly wiped and then probably wiped again.

So to the break room, which is only barely more spacious than the bathroom, cluttered with an unplugged mini-fridge, a microwave balanced atop a stack of three upside-down plastic milk crates, a larger trashcan than the one in the bathroom, and a card table with three folding metal chairs constellated around it. G-string girls bending over hot rods peer down from pinup posters tacked to the walls. Sara feels them watching her as she snaps her overall photographs and goes to check the trashcan, which she finds filled with used napkins, emptied chip bags, and crumpled Ho-Ho wrappers, its contents static-clinging to the liner. No one cleaned up in this room; there are still crumbs, a filled ashtray, and remnants from last lunch breaks present on the table. The prevailing smell is that of stale food, cigarette smoke, and the burnt out microwave. Years have probably passed since anyone even wiped the inside of the fridge out with a wet rag, let alone bleached the place. Sara gives the room a thorough once-over, but she finds nothing probative.

Unless later evidence proves otherwise, the break room was not involved in the commission of the crime.

Finished processing her own rooms, Sara decides to offer Grissom her help, partly because his area is the biggest and partly because it is most likely the primary crime scene and partly because where else would she go but to him, always, forever?

When Sara reenters the garage, she discovers him with his back to her. His kit is open beside him, and he is kneeling, camera in hand. At some point, he seems to have gone out to the Denali to fetch the portable, battery-operated K2 lamps, which he has arranged around the garage to provide himself some light to work by, though he currently has the lamps turned off. The floor where he kneels is illuminated through the dark: glowing with blue-white strokes, as if an impressionist had feathered out a painterly lake in Luminol on the concrete. Sara has enough time to register three things: the vastness of the pool; that the strokes were made by the yarn strands on a wet mop; and that Grissom is photographing the evidence. Then the reaction subsides, its luminescence fading back into darkness.

“That was a lot of bleach,” Sara says, announcing her presence.

Grissom doesn’t flinch and doesn’t look up. “And it was used to clean up a lot of blood,” he says, switching out his camera for a swab, “and to destroy our potential DNA evidence.”

“Well, at least we can be fairly certain that this is our primary crime scene,” Sara says. Then, her report. “Someone cleaned up in that bathroom. Bleach everywhere. I got nothing.”

“And the break room?”

“Still nothing.” She surveys the garage, taking note of the plastic trash carts hugging the wall. “Have you gone dumpster diving yet?” she asks Grissom, nodding towards them.

He knows she’s volunteering. “Not yet,” he says.

They share a look, him giving her silent permission to do whatever she thinks might best help him, her silently promising to find something in this shop, even though her rooms yielded nothing significant. There is concern in Grissom and intensity, and Sara wants now more than ever to lift it from him.

So she searches, turning on each of the K2 lamps and then moving down the back wall, checking each trash cart in turn. There are five trash carts in total, all of them of the ninety-five gallon industrial variety, issued by the city to businesses. Sara photographs their insides as she opens them. The first two are empty, and she can tell as much as soon as she starts to lift their lids. But when she takes hold of the third cart, she feels its heft—that there is something weighty inside it. And solid weight, not bagged trash. She lifts the lid, revealing the contents, and finds an entire swivel chair inside, of the kind that would come from an office. She photographs it.

“I got something,” she says.

Grissom has been tracing the edges of the room, following the wall panels in search of anything probative. He sits up. “Oh?”

“Somebody threw away an entire office chair,” she says.

“I bet that’s the same office chair that’s missing from the reception area,” says Warrick, who has appeared at the doorframe leading into the garage. He carries his kit in hand. “I found indentations in the rug behind the reception desk, indicating that there used to be a three-wheeled chair back there that isn’t there anymore.”

“Curious,” says Grissom.

Warrick nods. “Yeah, well, that’s about the only thing back there that is. Aside from the chair, there was nothing out of place and no signs of struggle.”

“Wanna help me get this chair out?” Sara asks him.

“Sure,” he says.

Warrick comes over, and, together, he and Sara flip the trash cart on its side, pulling the office chair free from its belly. The chair in no way seems broken. Its wheels turn, its base is steady, and it doesn’t wobble when handled. The upholstery on its seat and back appears relatively clean, without visible stains. There would be no reason to throw it away except to get it out of sight. Evidence disposal.

“There’s what appears to be adhesive residue,” Sara says, noting two strips, one on either side of the chair, where fuzz has accumulated on the plastic armrests. She photographs the strips as Warrick pops open his kit and produces a bindle and scalpel to take sample scrapings of the adhesive residue for Trace.

After collecting his sample, he leans in close to the back of the chair, gently waving his hand beside it, as if he were an oenophile taking in the waft of a particular vintage. He sniffs, and Sara waits for his pronouncement. “Definitely smells like solvent,” he says. “Somebody scrubbed down this chair.” He flips off the K2 lamp nearest to him and Sara and reaches for his kit, procuring his spray bottle of Luminol, spritzing the chemical it over the fabric. Sure enough, white-blue spots appear on the chair’s surface.

“What if,” says Sara, thinking aloud, “someone taped Jimmy or Coby up in this chair, and this is where they were shot?”

Neither Warrick nor Grissom has the chance to respond to her conjecture before Catherine reenters the garage, carrying a large cardboard box crammed to the brim with stuff. She heaves the box onto the emptied desk in the alcove. “Speaking of a shooting,” she says, “I found this in Rick Barrow’s office. It’s Caleb Blanchett’s war memorabilia.”

Warrick turns the third K2 lamp back on, so as to be able to see her better.

“Where’d he get that?” he asks.

“From Jimmy Blanchett,” Catherine says. She reaches into the box and produces a small notecard, from which she reads. “‘I know how much this stuff meant to you. He would want you to have it—JB.’” She sets the notecard on the desk and rifles through the other box contents, showing them off to Grissom, Sara, and Warrick: a framed certificate for the Silver Star award, along with a jewelry box containing the actual Silver Star pendant; dog tags; a placard with Caleb Blanchett’s squad logo embossed on it; ammunition boxes; and what looks like a fancy pen case, which Catherine opens to reveal two eagle feathers resting on a velvet cushion.

“Among the Southern Paiute, eagle feathers are given to those who have performed brave deeds,” Grissom says. “They symbolize being close to heaven. Oftentimes, they’re presented to military veterans who served in wartime. They perform special ceremonies meant to commemorate their valor. The feathers are considered sacred.” A pause. “I’m surprised Jimmy would give his father’s eagle feathers away.”

“He loved Rick Barrow, trusted him,” Sara infers, sad that the same man whom Caleb Blanchett risked his life to save most likely murdered Caleb Blanchett’s son.

“Putting his trust in the wrong person probably got Jimmy killed,” says Catherine, producing two more items from the box: identical gun cases, black plastic, military grade. She pops the snaps on first the one box and then the other, then opens the two boxes at the same time. There is nothing inside of them. “The ammo in the box is consistent with the Berettas the Army issued to Caleb and Rick: 9mm, M882 cannelure. Each box has ten cases, and each case has fifteen bullets in it.”

“One round each,” says Warrick.

“Right,” says Catherine, “—and there are two cases of bullets missing from the box. I found one gun case in this box, the other one stashed in Rick Barrow’s desk next to a bottle of Jim Beam. We know that one of these guns ended up on the side of Mount Charleston along with the bodies,” she says. “But where’s the other one?”

“Either with Rick Barrow or dumped somewhere,” Warrick says. Then. “Something bad went down at this shop.”

For three more hours, they process. Grissom continues to trace the baseboards, while Sara and Warrick grid the main floor, and Catherine takes everything from the doorknobs up. They photograph and sketch and lay down markers, take scrapings and make tape lifts, moving any object that can be moved to search around and behind and beneath it.

Early on, Brass checks in on them. He says that he talked to a couple of homeless guys who said they saw Rick Barrow hanging around the shop after its foreclosure, but neither of them could confirm that Jimmy and Coby were with him. Now Brass is going to head back to P.D. to see if he can help Sofia locate Barrow and his vehicle.

“Good luck with this place,” he says before he goes.

His well-wishes count for little.

Sara and Warrick find two gouges in the concrete garage floor, but whether or not they are probative is anyone’s guess. They could be signs of struggle, or they could be incidental auto shop wear and tear—evidence of a dropped tool or dragging axel only. Nothing else they find seems even potentially connected to the crime.

Soon, it is after seven o’clock in the morning, and the sun has risen, casting white light long through garage windows. Grissom, Sara, Catherine, and Warrick have processed the garage from wall to wall. But for all their searching, they still have nothing.

“Even with military training,” Sara says, “this guy should not be able to kill two people without leaving behind any evidence.”

She’s not the only one who is frustrated: Catherine stands scowling amid the items she has removed from the cupboards along the wall, her kit torn apart, every potentially beneficial powder and spray used; Warrick hunches over the emptied desk from the alcove, which he has overturned in order to search for stray blood, ransacking it of all its drawers, practically dismantling it, piece by piece; Grissom hasn’t fully stood up once since he Luminoled the floor, and he has that hard, eagle-eyed look to him, like he thinks that if he just stares intensely enough at all the places he’s already searched, he’ll come up with something that he missed before. All of them are tired. All of them are sullen.

The front entrance to the garage opens, and Nick appears, Greg on his heels, both of them haloed in morning light.

“Look who showed up! Better late than never,” Warrick says, hassling Nick in his usual way.

“Hey, now,” Nick warns. “Grissom had us both on call-outs. You’re just lucky we wrapped ‘em, and we’re here to lend our services.”

“And we come bearing coffee,” says Greg, holding up a tray of Starbucks, “—and good news. Detective Curtis told us to tell you that an officer in Pahrump responded to her BOLO and called in a twenty on Rick Barrow’s vehicle. She’s having it towed back to Vegas now. Should be waiting for us once we finish up here.”

He finds Sara first, extending her a coffee cup. “Thank you,” she says, and she means for more than just the caffeine. Just having him and Nick on scene makes her feel like the cavalry has arrived.

“How’re things going on this end?” Nick asks. “Where do you need us?”

Catherine responds to his question with a _Well, take a look around_ shrug: though they have completely processed the garage, they’re still here, aren’t they? They’ve got nothing definitive.

Greg looks to the box she brought out of Rick Barrow’s office. “What’s that?” he asks.

“Caleb Blanchett’s old Army stuff,” Catherine says. “Jimmy gave it to Barrow. There was a box of 9mm ammo inside with two cases missing from it. I also found two empty gun cases designed to hold Beretta M9s.”

“One of them Barrow’s?” Nick asks.

“Yeah,” says Warrick. “Cat pulled the case out of Barrow’s desk but there was nothing in it.”

Warrick brings Nick and Greg up to speed on what they’ve missed while Greg finishes distributing the coffee, and Nick surveys the garage, processing what he’s being told.

“So we have two identical M9s at play?” Nick says, more thinking aloud than asking a question.

“What you onto, partner?” Warrick asks.

“Well,” says Nick, “when we first started this investigation, we assumed that the M9 we recovered from the mountainside was our murder weapon, but the bullet fragments Doc pulled from the victims were too damaged to make a comparison, so we were never able to match them to that particular gun. Before we knew for sure that this case was a homicide and that there was another M9 involved, it was reasonable for us to make the assumption that the M9 from the mountainside was the gun that killed Jimmy and Coby.”

“But now you’re wondering if maybe Rick Barrow’s missing M9 isn’t our murder weapon,” Warrick infers.

“Right,” says Nick.

“So let’s say for the purpose of conjecture that Caleb Blanchett’s gun isn’t the murder weapon, and Rick Barrow’s is,” says Grissom, starting to perk up for the first time since arriving at the shop. “Where does that get us?”

“I processed Caleb’s gun,” Nick says. “There were thirteen rounds left in it, two bullets fired. I assumed that those bullets ended up in Jimmy and Coby’s heads. But if Caleb’s gun isn’t the murder weapon, and Barrow’s gun is, then who’s to say there weren’t more bullets fired? We might be looking at a gunfight.”

“I’m not saying that’s not possible,” Sara says, “but we’ve searched this entire garage, and we haven’t found any evidence of a gunfight or more than two bullets fired.”

“What about those gouges on the floor?” Greg asks, pointing to the markers Sara and Warrick placed in the grid. “They look like they could be ricochet marks.”

And it’s true: Without context, the gouges didn’t mean anything, but if they consider that there may have been more bullets flying in the garage than just the ones that ended up in Jimmy and Coby’s heads, the gouges suddenly transform. In her mind’s eye, Sara sees the scene: An argument that erupts into a shootout, Coby screaming and diving behind Jimmy, Jimmy firing off his father’s gun, Barrow firing off his own. Misplaced shots bite concrete and rebound through space.

Sara stares at the gouges. “These show directionality,” she says, noticing that they are deeper on one end than on the other.

Now Grissom is fully interested. “So let’s play ‘Find the Bullet,’” he says.

Calculating the trajectory of a ricocheted bullet is an inexact science at best. Bullet shape and makeup determine whether the bullet will ricochet in a given situation, and the velocity at which a bullet is traveling, the type of material with which it collides in ricochet, and the angle of the ricochet itself all affect how a bullet will travel once it ricochets off a particular surface. Even using everything she knows about physics, Sara couldn’t come up with a mathematical equation to find the path that the bullets that created these gouges may have traveled. There are too many variables, and especially considering that many of them are unknown. The best she and the rest of the team can do is guess.

They had already thoroughly processed the garage, but they hadn’t been looking for bullets doing so—and sometimes knowing what you’re looking for makes all the difference when it comes to finding it. Now that they’re viewing the gouge marks as evidence of potential gunfire, they can see that the gouge marks indicate shots fired towards the reception area and that the angle of incidence suggests a standing shooter but also perhaps an interrupted or off-balanced shot, hence why the bullets hit the floor rather than something higher up.

To start out, they process in a V-pattern out from the gouge marks, rechecking any and all potential places where the bullets may have lodged or gotten hidden amidst other items.

“Sara, may I borrow your multi-tool?” Greg asks, eyeing the moving parts on the hydraulic car lift nearest to the gouge marks.

“Sure,” she says, passing it over to him.

Greg protracts the screwdriver and uses it to remove a screw on the moving part of the lift, peeling back a small steel plate to reveal the inside compartment of a joint. Sara follows what he’s doing: seeing if the ricocheted bullet may have stuck somewhere in the parts of the lift. His first effort reveals no bullet, but there are more compartments to check. He goes to replace the steel plate, but then a flinch—he fumbles the screw, and it leaps from his hand, pinging against the steel edge of the lift leg and bouncing to the floor before rolling under a hinged pad at the foot of the leg.

“Oops,” Greg says, but Sara doesn’t actually think he’s made a mistake at all.

If a screw could end up under the pad, then who is to say that a bullet couldn’t have done the same? She gestures to Greg not to move and crouches down beside the lift leg, prying at the hinged pad. The pad is stubborn, so Sara motions for the screwdriver and uses it to jimmy up the hinge, revealing what lies beneath the pad in the small compartment below the floor. There, wedged between a shim and a hairpin bolt: a 9mm bullet. She plucks the bullet up with gloved fingers and holds it aloft for the team to see.

“Bingo,” Greg says, crouching close to her shoulder.

“Double bingo,” says Nick, who had been working near the stacked milk crates along the back wall. He stands aside from them, showing off an extracted bullet of his own—this one crusted with dried blood and castoff, its jacket stained an ugly rust brown.

Everyone else looks to Nick’s bullet, to the payoff of their searching, but Sara looks to Grissom while their attention is turned away, hopeful that this success has been enough to return him from his place of hard, obsessive thought. She checks his eyes first and sees them clear, then his expression, brighter and softer than before. Like always, he somehow perceives her watching him, the both of them drawn to each other like magnets. He stands up straighter and meets her gaze, at first curious but then suddenly relieved and grateful. His look floods with warmth and so does the deep cavity of her chest. She wanted to help him, and now she knows that she has.

Though there is nothing particularly romantic about the situation, she thinks just then of how much she loves him and of how much she cares that he is well. In the months before his recent sabbatical, he had seemed troubled and distant, and she had worried for him without knowing what to do to offer him her help. She knows now, in retrospect, that there was nothing she could have done to help him—that he had been working at something inside himself and that he had had to go away for a while to get at it. She couldn’t have sped the process or interrupted it. All she could do was to wait for him to come home, which was what she did, however nervous the waiting made her. For those four weeks, she had felt like a sailor’s wife perched on her widow’s walk, scanning for some sign of his ship come back to harbor. Now, after his return, he seems so much better, so much clearer, and moments like this one tell her that she won’t have to worry about losing him again.

 _Thank you,_ he mouths.

But even without the words, she already knows.

• • •

After seventeen hours, Grissom and Sara are off the clock again, and so they are back to the lab, collecting their things from the locker room, and then leaving in separate cars. Grissom has given Catherine instructions to be followed in his absence: he wants her on DNA, Nick on ballistics, Warrick on crime scene reconstruction, and Greg on Barrow’s impounded vehicle. If Barrow turns up, they should call him.

Today, Sara is the one to pick up Hank from the sitter’s, so Grissom arrives home before she does. To while his wait, he busies himself watering the plants along the windowsill, sorting through their mail, and, then, starting to make breakfast. Though they hadn’t had much private time together at the crime scene, Grissom is still feeling wonderfully close to Sara, who is always so careful of him, watchful and mindful, even from afar. Gratitude wells in him because he knows that she has been looking after him, all last night and into this morning. He wants to thank her, but words fail, and so action. He has the skillet popping with heat by the time the front door opens, and she enters the condo with Hank.

A skitter of claws across the floor and down the stairs, and, in seconds, Hank is in the kitchen, nudging his nose against Grissom’s pant leg. Still in the sitting room, Sara calls out, “Hey! Did you get the paper already?” Then, seeing Grissom at the stove, smelling the sweetness in the air, “Pancakes?” She sets her kit down in its place and hangs up Hank’s leash and her jacket on their hooks, coming down to the kitchen to investigate, as Hank has.

“They’re vegan,” Grissom says. And. “Yes, I got the paper.”

Sara maneuvers around Hank to flank Grissom, leaning against the counter to observe his cooking in action. “Very fancy,” she says, flirting. “What’s the occasion?”

“You are.”

Every now and again, Grissom can manage to catch Sara completely off-guard, to say something that causes her to smile her widest, most unencumbered smile. He does so now and revels in it: in her mouth falling open just a bit, in the way she lets out a little gasp, surprised and pleased and fond. A split-instant elapses before she can gather herself enough to say anything back to him.

“Flattery and pancakes will get you _everywhere._ ”

“It’s only flattery if it’s not true.”

Another full smile, another gasp. “I—,” Sara starts to say but then stops herself. But then an expression that Grissom can’t read. A hesitation, perhaps. The unreadable look replaced by a shyer smile, maybe even a blush. She glances away and then back. “You’re, uh, burning your pancakes,” she tells him.

They eat their meal on the couch, watching a documentary about the Byzantine Empire. Sara sits with her legs slung over Grissom’s lap, while Grissom sits with his feet up on the coffee table, and Hank lies nearby on the rug, whining because he wants them to share their pancakes.

“Where did you learn to make these?” Sara asks between her last bites.

“I googled the recipe,” Grissom says.

He keeps his eyes trained to the television screen but sees Sara smile her unencumbered smile again in his peripheral vision. She opens her mouth as if to say something but seems to decide against it. Instead, she leans over to the coffee table to set her empty plate down. Then, she takes Grissom’s empty plate from him, placing it beside her own. Catching her cue, Grissom reaches for the remote and switches off the television, expecting them to get up and carry the plates to the kitchen. But before he can stand, Sara has shifted position beside him, swinging her legs off his lap so that she can sit up.

Grissom doesn’t manage to fully turn to look at her when suddenly her hand is on his face, guiding him, and then she’s kissing him like a throb, like a deep pulse, her lips still sweet from maple syrup, full on his, wet and warm and working. He feels her kiss everywhere, in a pleasant starburst pulse around his mouth, in a heat that spreads across his face, in a sudden awakening all over his skin, through him and to his center.

He closes his eyes and submits, allowing Sara to captain the moment. Her hand moves from his cheek to the back of his neck, to just where his hair meets his skin, a favorite place for her to cradle him. She kisses him even deeper, more breathlessly, her tongue slicking over his tongue, then retracting, both of her lips capturing his bottom lip for a final instant until she recedes like a wave from the shore.

Grissom had never had much use for kissing until it suddenly had use for him—until Sara could give him kisses and teach him what they were for. Now, after this kiss, he feels as if he extends beyond his own body, like Sara has come and imparted something to him but also taken something from him back to herself, making it a part of her. He is glad to receive and gladder to give. Even now that seconds have passed, he can still feel the throb of her pressed upon his mouth.

She releases her hold from him and leans back against the couch, and he can’t help but stare. Where did that kiss come from? She reads his expression and smiles, shrugging one shoulder, strangely diffident, given she just kissed him like a hurricane. Her answer: From nowhere. From everywhere. Her smile shifts into a smirk.

“Should we walk the dog?” she asks.

They do walk the dog—just around their building and back again, enjoying the clear, bright morning light and the coolness of the day. Sara talks the way she sometimes does, as if she is giving a recitation—like she feels compelled to fill the silence. Today, she tells Grissom about String Theory, about the expression of dimensions, point-particles, quantum gravity, and multiplicities of universes. Grissom responds that the science fits with certain mystery Vedas of the Hindu Brahmins, and she smiles at him and recites from some other script about C.V. Raman, the Hindu physicist who won the 1930 Nobel Prize for his work on light scattering.

The longer they walk, the more Grissom perceives that there is something that Sara wants to say to him that has nothing to do with bosons, fermions, and Indian contributions to science, but for some reason she can’t articulate whatever the something might be. She hasn’t found the words. He knows better than to prod or to try to supply the right phrasing for her. She’ll find what she wants to say somehow, when she’s ready. Until then, he will wait and listen.

They’re back to the condo and in bed by ten in the morning, under the covers and face to face on their pillows. Sara has her hand on Grissom’s cheek and is stroking over his beard with her thumb. “You should shave,” she mumbles. It isn’t what she wants to say to him, but it is the last thing that she says to him before she rolls over in his arms to fall asleep.

Hours later, he awakens to her watching him. “Sorry,” she says as soon as she sees his eyes open, as if she had done something wrong. He reassures her with a shake of his head. No need to be sorry. He knows she’s thinking. “Did you sleep okay?” she asks him, reaching out to stroke his face again. He is still groggy, so he nods but doesn’t elaborate. He thinks he might have dreamed of her, but the dream memories have already mostly left him. All he has is a sweet impression, the fading image of them in the canyon again.

Her hand on his cheek stills, and she glances first to his eyes and then to his lips, silently asking him if they can kiss good morning. Yes. He lifts up off the pillow, draping himself half over her, kissing down while she kisses up and arches slightly from the bed to reach him. She takes a breath just before their mouths meet, and it’s a wet, wanting sound. She had been waiting for him to wake, and now he has, and she clasps the back of his neck and clings to him, nudging her nose against his cheek and kissing him just off-center on his lips. One kiss trails into several before they part, but this is only prelude. It is only four o’clock in the afternoon, and they have time before shift to make love as they like.

So more touches, his hands trailing over her sides, working her up to quicker breaths until she is lifting from her pillow to reach him. They’re not graceful about undressing. For a few moments, they’re all elbows and knees, apologies as they knock into each other. They have to kick off their blankets and pull themselves apart when their bodies want only fusion. Between items stripped away, they duck in for more misaimed kisses. They laugh when Sara tosses off her shirt, and it lands partially over Hank, who had been sleeping on the rug in front of the closet. The dog grunts, confused.

“Go to your throw,” Grissom commands him, and he obeys, shaking the shirt off his flank, trotting out of the bedroom in an attitude of longsuffering.

They laugh again, and Grissom takes Sara in, shirtless and smiling. He grabs for her hips, pulling her closer to him on the mattress, and when he kisses her throat, he feels the vibrations of her laughter through her thin, soft skin. His heart contracts like the beating of a bird’s wing in flight, and he is all over her, as much as he can be, loving how she feels against him, her body writing cursive over his own in beautiful script.

Now, fully naked together, Grissom lies Sara down, keeping one hand under the small of her back while they kiss heavily, with tongue. He has learned so much in these last few years with Sara, all about how to heed the body and to take pleasure in its strange and wonderful mechanics. But more than that, he has learned to attune himself to Sara, to understand the way she moves and what she wants and needs from him by her smallest cues and gasped breaths.

More ungracefulness as he dons a condom, and he and Sara drape themselves in bedding, concealing their bodies from the cold. When she is ready, he presses between her legs, inserting himself there, and then they’re making love. The throb from her morning kiss to him is everywhere, and especially inside of her. They rock, and he wants to kiss all of her skin, to make her feel every good thing. Her muscles contract around him, and her thighs flex, and she makes a sound like a keen. He thinks again about his lingering question and promises himself as he starts to fully thrust that someday he will ask her, someday, someday, someday.

She comes before he does, and she sighs when he pulls out of her. They’re both spent, and a sweet lassitude spreads through their systems, a natural narcotic. She pouts when he rises to throw the condom away and wash himself up in the bathroom, and, when he returns, she watches him redress in his boxers, impatient for him to join her again in bed. As soon as he’s under the covers, she wraps her arms around his shoulders, pulling him down close to her, kissing at his ear.

“I love you,” she says, flighty and breathless, as if revealing a secret—and he knows at once that that is the thing she had been trying to say to him all morning, finally given voice.

The truth is that they’ve only recently begun to say “I love you” aloud to each other, though they’ve been together now for nearly two years, and, at least on Grissom’s part, the feeling behind the words is one that he has felt for as long as he and Sara have known each other.

For its newness, each time they say it, the expression comes as a surprise. It still feels like a revelation and a confession, like something they are only allowed to whisper in these quietest, most private moments. They've never said it when they weren't in bed together yet, though it seems now that Sara may want to. A sweet ache plays through Grissom's chest, and he both hears her words and feels them, all the way to his core. Sara holds her breath beneath him, waiting, and he retracts from her so he can look into her eyes.

“I do, too,” he says. “I mean, love you.” He doesn’t intend to be so clumsy. Then, better. What he really means. “I love you, Sara.”

“Yeah?” she says, biting back a smile.

“Yeah.”

A full smile then, unencumbered, and he settles down beside her, fitting himself in with his head rested at her shoulder, one arm slung over her waist. She reaches up to comb her fingers through his hair, and he hears her heart beating. For a few moments, they’re quiet, and he wonders what she would say if he asked her his question right then.

But before he might speak—

His phone rings on the nightstand.

Both he and Sara scoff at the intrusion, but still he moves, slowly extricating himself from Sara so he can turn over and pick up. Caller i.d. says Catherine Willows. He answers just before the call goes to voicemail, bedding back down on his pillow with the phone pressed to his ear.

“Grissom.”

“Were you sleeping?”

“No.”

“Did you sleep?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, Nicky ran the bullets through I.B.I.S., and, get this: both of them are a match to Caleb Blanchett’s gun but are consistent with the ammo I recovered from Rick Barrow’s office. So Rick Barrow had to have been the one to load that gun, but it isn’t the murder weapon. I had Wendy run all our swabs, and everything you and Sara pulled off the floor was too deteriorated for comparison purposes, but she was able to compare the DNA from Nicky’s bullet to the victims, and it’s not a match, so somebody else got shot in that garage.”

“Rick Barrow?”

“We don’t know yet. There were some epithelial cells in the adhesive on the chair, and they’re a match to Coby Ohte.”

Catherine goes on talking, starting to say that Warrick is still working on his simulation, but just then Grissom becomes aware of Sara moving at his side, shifting in closer, and his attention to Catherine wanes. Sara meets his eyes and smirks, wicked. The next thing he knows, she is sucking on his neck, her mouth open, hot and wet, against his skin.

Jesus, Mary, Joseph.

Her body is half-draped over his, her breasts pushed up against his chest. Except for his boxer shorts, they’re both still naked, and their bodies still tuned to each other from recent sex. She finds his pulse point and tongues at it, at first lightly, teasing him, but then more insistently. Catherine asks some kind of question. He can’t focus on it, so he dodges, guessing.

“Uh, has Greg been able to, um—?”

“Compare the upholstery from Barrow’s car to the fibers from Coby’s hair? Yes. They’re a match, so we’ve at least got the bastard on transporting the bodies.”

“That’s, uh, good.”

“Are you okay?”

Sara sucks his earlobe.

“Great. I’ll, uh—”

“See me when you see me. Right.”

Catherine ends the call, and as soon as Grissom flips his phone closed, Sara starts laughing. Grissom meets her with what he hopes is a stern look.

“You’re going to get us caught someday.”

“You’re just lucky I didn’t go with my original plan,” she says, and her hand slips under their covers, down to the waistband of his boxer shorts. She gives him another wicked smirk and starts to lift the elastic.

But before she can touch him—

Her phone rings on the nightstand, and they both scoff again.

She rolls off of Grissom to check who is calling, and it must be someone from the lab, because she answers on the next ring.

“Sidle.”

Grissom hears a male voice on the other end of the line: Greg, excited, speaking animatedly. Grissom listens in and picks up the words: Greg thinks he may have just broken the case, matching the fibers from Rick Barrow’s vehicle to the ones from Coby’s hair. They’ve got Barrow on the body dump. It’s the same news Catherine just relayed to Grissom—which means that Sara has heard it before, listening in on the first call. Still, she praises Greg, inflecting brightness into her voice.

“Way to go, rock star. That’s awesome. No, yeah. I’ll be in in a little while. Great work.”

Grissom can’t help but roll his eyes at her effusion. While it certainly is a good break, having Barrow on the body dump, Greg matched the fibers performing a routine function of his job. Nothing he did warrants special commendation.

“What?” Sara says, catching Grissom’s expression. Then, realizing what he disapproves of. She shakes her head, reproving him, and lies back down on his chest. “Greg has just been having a hard time since the James case,” she says quietly. “He needs some encouragement until he gets his confidence back. It doesn’t hurt to be nice to him.”

And, okay.

A swell of affection for her floods Grissom’s chest, and he finds himself completely disarmed. He hadn’t realized how conscientious she was being with Greg. Her thoughtfulness awes him. “No, it doesn’t,” he agrees, kissing the top of her head. She is not just watchful over him but over everyone she cares about, and he loves her for it. A pause. “I admire the kind of friend that you are,” he says. To particularize. “I wouldn’t have thought about something like that—about Greg. It, uh, doesn’t come naturally to me to be aware of how other people are feeling. To be empathetic.”

Sara glances up at him, surprised. “You’re one of the most empathetic people I know,” she says. She looks at him with clarity and surety in her eyes. “You’re so considerate—always with me, and our whole team. The people we meet working cases. You don’t give yourself enough credit for it.” She leans down to press a quick kiss to his shoulder, and he feels the same way that he did when she said again that she loves him, warm to his core. "Even if it doesn't come naturally, you work at it. You take the time to figure people out. And most people don't."

“Sara,” he says, and he wants to tell her that sometimes when he compares himself to everyone around him, he finds himself so incredibly lacking—he feels less than human. Stunted. Unconnected. But never with her. She is the person in the world he thinks most highly of, most admires, most loves, and, for some reason, she holds him in esteem, and the fact that she does helps him to believe that maybe he isn’t deficient after all, that there is something worthwhile inside him, which she can see, even if he cannot see it for himself. She helps him to believe in things, in all kinds of goodness he had once believed was impossible. He reaches for the words but settles instead on a kiss, on lifting her from his shoulder and coaxing her up to him, pressing his lips to her lips. “Thank you,” he says, touching their foreheads together, and he hopes that she understands.


	7. Chapter 7

**March 4th, 2007**

For years, Sara’s experience was that if she ever wanted anything too much, she would have it ripped away from her. So she tried not to want. Not to get attached. Trouble was, not wanting anything was as unnatural to her as not breathing might have been. She had always had an elastic heart, and it was always snagging on things—on people, especially. Every time there was that horrible pull, that horrible snap, the inevitable break, and, every time, she would swear to herself: never again.

But then she met Grissom, and she had fallen in love with him right away and all at once.

He was so intense, so brilliant, handsome, and unusual, unlike anyone she had ever encountered before. They had talked for hours after his seminar and then walked all around the city—stayed out until three in the morning, like teenagers, until the tule fog had rolled in. When he dropped her off for the night at her front doorstep, he had kissed the back of her hand, as if they were in the Regency period. She had never met anyone as charming as he was, and she was completely taken, head over heels, already.

That night, she had lied in bed and in the darkness said aloud to herself, _This is insane._ Insanity was making no pretense to him about her desires. Insanity was being so emotionally transparent. Insanity was not being able to shut up in his presence—was constantly talking and over-talking, laughing and smiling more than she ever had before in her life. Insanity was falling in love with him so hard and so fast, knowing that he could already break her with just one look or a word, though she had only known him for fourteen hours.

So she was insane, crazy for him.

While she was still in San Francisco and only seeing him at conferences and over long weekends, she had tried to hold back, to safeguard herself, but then moving to Vegas had destroyed her resolve. Just being in close proximity to him proved what she had already known but had been too scared to admit: she wanted him—his time, his attention, his affection, his love—more than she had ever wanted anything before in her life. Her elastic heartstrings weren’t just snagged on him but tangled up in his, inextricably.

Her wanting for him had only intensified once they were finally together. Those first few months, when he was coming over to her place, saying and doing the sweetest things in the darkness of her bedroom but never staying over, had almost killed her. Loving him had felt like the fresh ache of a wound, sharp and bright and keen as a laceration. That he always got up to leave afterwards and then could wear such a placid look at work hours later, staring her in the face as if nothing were happening between them—that had scared her and caused her to wonder if her wanting was greatly inordinate to his. If she had ever found out that he weren’t as invested, that he didn’t need as much, she wouldn’t have been able to survive. Even just living with the uncertainty was in some ways unbearable. She loved him so much she could hardly breathe sometimes, and she didn’t know if he felt the same.

—until suddenly she did.

The first thing he told her was that he came to her because he wanted to, not for any other reason, and then his behavior changed: he had her over to his place, and, wherever they were, her place or his, they stayed, both of them. He held her while they slept, buried his face in her hair. Then they started going out, not just meeting up at their homes. They had dinners and saw movies, and he took her to museums, on nature walks, and to concerts. He was so charming, even more so than he had been in San Francisco, reciting poetry while he kissed her, asking if he could hold her hand while they walked, as if she would ever refuse. She felt safer with him then, but she also loved him even more, and she still waited, wondering if she would ever know for certain if he fully reciprocated her feelings, the wound-ache of her love wearing deep into her heart, until she almost couldn’t stand it anymore.

Somehow he seemed to know her trepidations, because, finally, he said the words, rolling over to go to sleep after they had been together, as if he had said them a thousand times before, as if there were no surprise to them: _I love you, Sara._

Ever since then, she has always been the one to initiate the exchange, but he has always said his part and always looked so fervent, saying it. She is much more certain now, much more grounded. He is in her house, in her bed, in her heart. She reads his love written into his actions, never mind that he is never the first one to say his love aloud in words.

Of course, when she is honest with herself, she can’t deny that she still experiences that split instant of fear, that old returning ache, in those few seconds before he echoes what she has said, when she wonders if she is wanting too much or asking for something he isn’t willing to give.

But it lasts only for as long as it takes him to reply.

Once he speaks—once she hears him say _I love you, Sara_ , as he has said now, so many times—relief and gratitude flood through her, like the crashing of a wave over a beach, and she wants him and loves him fearlessly.

Fearlessly in love is how she feels, her arms linked around his waist, her face pressed to his shoulder. They wait for their coffee to cool in the kitchen. She presses a gentle kiss against the fabric of his shirt.

“I shouldn’t have told Greg I’d come in,” she says.

He shrugs. “We would have had to go in anyway.”

“They still don’t have Barrow yet.”

“It’s just Greg. We could stay here until the shift starts, if you want. Less overtime for us. Might make Ecklie happy.” Though he’s being wry about Ecklie, he’s being sensitive to her. If she told him she wanted to wait to go in until eleven, at the official start of the night shift, he would stay with her. They would wait. He is putting the decision up to her, no rush, no worries, whatever she likes.

“Since when do you care about Ecklie? And what about Catherine?”

“What about her?” Then. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She peels back from him, picking up her coffee mug from the countertop, the right temperature to drink from by now. Their eyes meet, and his are very blue. “If we don’t go in, they’ll wrap the case without us.”

He smiles at her, and the crow’s feet around his eyes deepen. “Okay,” he says. He seems to understand that her desire to stay home is a want and not a need. She’s willing to go in, so they’ll go in.

“I’ll take Hank?”

“Lucky dog.”

Now it’s her turn to smile deeply. “You know,” she says, “scientifically speaking, there is no such thing as luck.”

“I know,” he says, and he smiles again like he’s keeping a secret.

Sara thinks about Grissom as she drives. Sometimes she is thirteen years old again and has a crush, and he is all she can think about. She picks him out in every crowd, and she wants to spend hours analyzing him. But then she is also thirty-five years old and in love in a practiced, measured way. She is thinking about the kind of future that she wants to have, and not just the one she anticipates she will have, for the first time in her life. The realist in her cautions that she should check herself, should hold something back, in case she has to cut her losses, but she doesn’t—can’t, maybe—because, despite her anxieties, she feels wholly settled whenever she and Grissom are together, like she has found a place to stay forever, his heart in her heart, and hers in his.

God help her, if he asked her to marry him, she’d say yes.

She reaches over to scratch Hank’s ear at a stoplight. “Lucky dogs, huh, Hank?” she says, and Hank pants, open-mouthed and as happy as she.

The sitters at the doggy daycare delay Sara with the story of how, yesterday, Hank befriended a cockapoo puppy and shared a chew with him, and then Sara delays herself, stopping by the deli to pick up sandwiches—for Grissom, who didn’t eat anything before he left the condo, and also for everyone else, since they have been on most or all of the night and through today. She arrives at the lab just after six o’clock and finds Grissom before she even makes the locker room.

“I got those fingers fully rehydrated,” he tells her. “Positive i.d. on Jimmy Blanchett.” His news isn’t unexpected, but it is welcome—another piece to the puzzle, fully fitted in. He notes the brown paper sack she carries for the first time. “What’s that?”

“I, uh, grabbed some sandwiches, for anyone who wants them,” she says. He knows, of course, that she means she got him a sandwich and then got sandwiches for anyone else who wants them as an afterthought—a cover, a concealment. Recognition registers on his face, and his expression brightens with gratitude. Warmth blooms over her skin.

“Break room, five minutes,” he says. “We’ll get you a rundown.”

Not even five minutes elapse before the team assembles, quick to turn up at the promise of free food.

“Heard you brought sandwiches,” Nick says, entering the break room almost as soon as Sara sets the deli sack down on the table. He grins, Warrick right on his heels, Greg, Catherine, and Grissom a little bit behind.

“No sandwich jokes,” Sara warns.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” says Warrick, smiling his lazy smile. He reaches into the sack, rustling out condiments and napkins. “You remembered the horseradish sauce. Atta girl!”

“Save me the pastrami,” says Grissom, and no one but Sara notices how sure he is it will be there.

“Anybody want my tomato?” Greg offers, already picking through the layers of his selection.

Catherine snatches it. “I’ll take it.”

Watching everyone bustling around the table—this mad grab moment, this perfect chaos—Sara feels the bloom of warmth again, not just for Grissom this time, but for their whole team and for all of this—her strange and wonderful life. Seven years ago, she would have never allowed herself to want something like this, but now she has it. She smiles as Greg slides her sandwich to her.

“Sprouts,” he says, scrunching up his nose in mock disgust. Then, noticing her smile. “What?”

“Nothing,” she says, but it isn’t what she means.

Everyone is settling into chairs now, food in hand. There’s still enough chitchat passing between the various team members that her conversation with Greg seems to happen almost privately, no one focused in on them. Greg quirks an eyebrow. “You look happy,” he says. He sounds suspicious.

She smirks. “I’m allowed.”

But Greg isn’t instantly convinced. He stares at her, scrutinizing, and, for a split instant, she wonders if he can see it on her—see not just that she is happy but why she is so. Guilt twinges beneath her breastbone. She hates lying to him, even just by omission, but what can she say? Just then, Grissom calls on Nick to start making his report, and she can’t pause to think; she just has to go with whatever is happening. If Greg can see, then he can see. She doesn’t know how to hide the happiness she feels.

Aside from Grissom making the positive i.d. on Jimmy Blanchett, not much has changed since Catherine called Grissom and Greg called Sara earlier in the day. They know Barrow’s car was used to transport Jimmy and Coby’s bodies; they’ve matched the two stray bullets from the garage to Caleb Blanchett’s M9; they’ve determined that since no other ammunition is missing from Caleb Blanchett’s M9, Barrow’s M9 is most likely the murder weapon, and it is still missing—as is Barrow himself; they know that Coby Ohte was at some point taped to the office chair Sara and Warrick recovered from the garage. The only new information they’ve gotten comes from Warrick’s digital recreation of the primary crime scene, which shows that the stray bullets Sara and Nick recovered from the garage were most likely fired by a shooter in the process of entering the garage through the side door. Warrick suspects that the shooter was Jimmy and that he was firing at Barrow, who was located behind the hydraulic lifts.

They still don’t know the sequence of events that led to the shooting or what precipitated the first shots fired. Did Jimmy and Coby arrive at the garage together or separately? How did Coby wind up taped to a chair? Why did Jimmy only fire two shots? How did he and Coby wind up dead?

Unless they get Barrow in custody, they can only speculate.

So the team disperses—Warrick off to meet with the D.A. on one of his old cases going to trial, Nick to wrap some paperwork from his 245 from last night, Greg to log all the tape lifts and swabs they took from the auto shop, Grissom to his office, and Catherine to hers. With nothing else pressing to do, Sara retreats to the evidence locker, where she opens another Dell box and starts sorting the detritus.

As she sifts through faded receipts and work order forms, her thoughts skip between work and home.

She’s wondering about Caleb Blanchett’s M9, how Jimmy seems to have given it to Barrow and then to have gotten it back somehow. He had to have had it in his possession when he came to the shop, right? He walked in the door and started firing. So when did he get it and under what circumstances? Did Barrow give it back to him for protection against Kinney, maybe?

But then she’s onto the Dell case, curious that so many Dell fosters seem to have kept in contact with Ernie even after aging out or being emancipated from the system. She hasn’t maintained relationships with any of her old foster families. How is it that the man who said such horrible things in his suicide video and who raised a serial killer seems to have been a good foster father—good enough that many of the foster children who passed through his home over the years would still call him, write to him, and visit him once they were grown?

Thinking on issues of bondedness and permanence brings her back to Grissom, to the one tie she’s kept over the last nine years. Nine years is a long time—as long as she was in her family home. She has never been so settled before, never held down one job for so long, never stayed in one place and known the same people. Maybe that’s why the longer she stays, the less she fears. Grissom has given her reason to believe that good things can last, that she can hold on to what she wants, that nothing will rip that good away from her.

She is somewhere between wondering if Grissom has told his mother about them yet and trying to date a Dell family photo based on the toys the kids in the photo are playing with when Nick pokes his head into the evidence locker. It’s just after nine-thirty.

“We got him,” he says, beaming.

“Barrow?”

“Yeah, Sofia put out an A.P.B. on him, and a sheriff in Bullhead City called in about twenty minutes ago—says he got him and his M9. Picked him up trying to thumb a ride to Arizona on the side of the interstate. They’re gonna transport him up here, get us the gun.”

“That’s great.”

Having delivered his news, Nick surveys Sara’s project—the stacks of papers, photographs, and assorted household items spread over the display table. He smirks. “More Mini stuff, huh? For Grissom?”

“Yeah.”

Nick chuckles, “Figures,” and exits the evidence locker before Sara can ask him what he means by his quip—if he means anything by it at all.

Maybe she should feel nervous that both he and Greg have made insinuations today, but she isn’t. They’re close to solving the case, Gil Grissom loves her, and the world doesn’t feel so bad. So many things about today seem to have worked themselves into a perfect confluence. So many things could potentially be worse than having her happiness known.

• • •

 **March 5th, 2007**  

Sofia calls over from P.D. at quarter to midnight: Barrow has just arrived from Bullhead City. She’s got him waiting, if Grissom wants to come over to process him and then sit in for the interview. Grissom says he’ll bring Sara—ostensibly because the processing will go faster with two C.S.I.s, but, in reality, because he’s missed her, these last few hours. Nick mentioned that she was in the evidence locker, searching through property seized from the Dell residence. She’s still there when Grissom goes to fetch her, poring over old documents, sorting them.

She doesn’t notice Grissom’s arrival at first, so he glimpses her, candid and totally unself-conscious. She sits with one elbow propped on the display table, her face rested on her hand. Her brow furrows, and she bites her lip. She is the picture of concentration—contemplative and adorable.

“Sara?” Grissom says, and she brightens, sits up, and looks at him with wide eyes, surprised that he has seemingly appeared to her from nowhere. “Would you like to come with me to P.D.? Sofia has Barrow waiting.”

“I’d love to,” she says warmly.

He enters the evidence locker and starts to help her pack up her piles, fitting them back inside the box. “Find anything good?”

“Lionel Dell came in first place in the Pinewood Derby for his Cub Scout troop three years in a row,” she says, shrugging. “Apparently, Ernie helped him make his cars. But, no, nothing probative. No other names for the foster kids. Just family photos.” She pauses, mulling something, then chooses her next words carefully. “Do you ever think about how many random people have photos of you, just lying around their houses? How many shots you’re accidentally in, just in the background, walking past? Or maybe from birthday parties you went to when you were a kid—stuff your classmates have held onto, or at least their parents have?”

He knows she’s wondering about her old foster families: how many of them have photos of her, leftover from when she was a child. She’s mentioned that a thoughtful social worker snagged her a few family photos from her childhood home before the estate sale, but he imagines she doesn’t have many or any photos from the years when she was in the system. Strange to think that someone else might have some stored away in boxes in their attic or displayed over their fireplace mantle. Strange to think that she could be part of an investigation like this one without even realizing it. It’s another small, incalculable way in which foster placement disrupts a child’s life: no normalcy in when she is photographed or by whom or in who gets to keep the printed shots.

In his mind’s eye, Grissom can picture Sara in adolescence: slouching, too thin, the hard look in her eyes masking an underlying sorrow, maybe a few yearbook photos here, a few Child Welfare Services headshots there. Suddenly, he worries that he was perhaps being insensitive yesterday, talking about his mother keeping his old school photos, speaking so freely of his happy childhood to her.

But, of course, she never seems to begrudge him what he had that she did not.

“Not really,” he admits. He thinks he understands a bit better now why it is that she takes so many photos of him, of them together, of Hank, of their quiet moments at home. “You ready to go?” He passes her one of the derby cars—its body cavity hollowed out and stuffed with pewter weights. Clever.

“Let me grab my kit. I’ll meet you out front.”

Since they have to bring their kits and other materials for evidence collection, they decide to drive the block between the lab and P.D. As soon as they close the Denali doors, Grissom takes Sara’s hand over the console. It’s dark enough, and there’s no one else in the parking lot, so he kisses the back of it, knowing that they’re safe. “I missed you,” he says.

She laughs at him, amused. “It’s only been a few hours.” But then. Sweeter. “I missed you, too.” For a few seconds, they stare at each other, dopey and contented. Then Sara laughs again. “I’m gonna need that back to start the car,” she says, tugging her hand in his.

“Sorry,” he says, relinquishing his hold.

Five minutes later, they’re at P.D., back to being professional, commensurate, and focused on the case. Sofia has Barrow in holding. They look at him through the glass before heading in to start the processing: he is a lean man, sullen and sweaty, seated on the bench, wringing his hands together so tightly that his fingers blanch.

“How was he for the Bullhead guys?” Sara asks Sofia.

“Start and stall,” Sofia says. “They say he’ll talk for about five minutes, get telling some story, then go quiet. Don’t think he can decide what to say, what not to.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s guilty,” Sara surmises, scowling.

Grissom gestures for her and Sofia to follow him inside the room. “Mr. Barrow,” he says. “My name is Gil Grissom. I’m with the Crime Lab. This is Sara Sidle, also with the Crime Lab. We’re here to collect potential evidence from your clothes and person.”

Barrow looks up at Grissom, wide-eyed. “Oh,” he says weakly, as if he hadn’t expected that there would be any sort of intake process. Unlike Kinney, he is not a career criminal and isn’t accustomed to the rigmarole of a booking.

“Stand up, please,” Sara says, gesturing him up from the bench. He complies, cautious. “Extend your arms straight out to the sides,” Sara tells him, and he does. She nods and starts snapping photos, overalls from head to toe. “Step out away from the bench.” She circles him, and he swallows, hard.

Once she has her shots. “Mr. Barrow, will you remove your shirt please?” Grissom asks.

Barrow appears bleary now, almost disoriented. “U-uh,” he says.

“Detective Curtis and I can step out of the room, if you like,” Sara offers.

“No, uh—that’s, um—,” Barrow says. He doffs first his button-up, then the t-shirt underneath it.

Grissom opens up an evidence collection bag and indicates that Barrow should drop the garments inside, which he does. Grissom nods thank you and seals the bag, stepping aside so that Sara can document the visible injuries on Barrow’s skin, if there are any.

Sara snaps photos of his neck, then pauses. “Grissom,” she says, “check this out.” She points to Barrow’s brow—a shiny, pink scar just above his left eyebrow, neither raised nor indented, barely visible, except in close proximity. The scar measures about an inch in length and appears clean and tapered at one end. Telltale. Sara snaps three photos of it, in quick succession.

“Mr. Barrow,” Grissom says. “Where did you come by that scar?”

“I, uh—I don’t remember,” he says, almost woozy.

Sofia waits in the corner, her arms crossed and her expression smug. “Dodged the bullet with that one,” she says. “—mostly, anyway.”

Grissom produces a buccal swab from a pocket of his vest and protracts the tip. “I’m going to use this swab to collect a DNA sample from your mouth,” he tells Barrow. “Then I’m going to compare your DNA to the DNA we found on a bullet we recovered from the wall in your auto shop. We know that the bullet was fired from the gun we found on Jimmy Blanchett’s body. I have a feeling the two samples will match, and, if they do, it will confirm that you were in a gunfight in your auto shop, most likely facing off against Jimmy Blanchett.” He holds the swab up to Barrow’s mouth. “Say ‘ah,’” he says.

Grissom takes his swab and sends it immediately over to the lab via courier so that Wendy can run the DNA, rush. With everything photo-documented and logged, Sara and Sofia step out of the room so that Barrow can change into department-issued scrubs and Grissom can collect his pants as evidence. Once Barrow redresses, they move him into an interview room, and Grissom, Sara, and Sofia sit down across the table from him.

Sofia starts out. “Mr. Barrow, when you were last here, you claimed that you hadn’t had contact with either Jimmy Blanchett or Coby Ohte since 2005 and that you didn’t know why they visited your shop in January of this year. But after reviewing Jimmy and Coby’s phone records, we found that you maintained constant contact with them, ever since they moved to Vegas. We also found that you were playing phone tag with Jimmy in the days leading up to his death, and that you were the second to last person Coby called on the day she died—and you answered her call. Would you like to revise your previous statement? Maybe tell us what you and Coby were talking about?”

Barrow fidgets and opens his mouth, gawping, but he doesn’t reply.

“I read over the transcript of your interview with Captain Brass and C.S.I. Brown,” Grissom says. “In that interview, you claimed that you didn’t know who had given Jimmy and Coby the $20,000 in cash loans. We later spoke to Al Kinney. Mr. Kinney told us that you referred Jimmy and Coby to him—”

“I did,” Barrow says, seeming all at once to find his words. “I had, uh, taken out some loans from Kinney before—for—for my shop—so I told Jimmy to go to him, and he did. Only Jimmy couldn’t pay the loans back in time, and Kinney—he’s a real mean S.O.B. Did you look into him?”

“We did,” Sara says, “but he says he never touched Jimmy and Coby, and his alibi checks out—unlike yours. He said we should look into you, Mr. Barrow.”

The implied accusation seems to invigorate Barrow. “That’s why I was talking to Jimmy and Coby on the phone!” he says. “That’s why I lied before, about them calling me! I knew they were in trouble with Kinney, and they came to me for help. Coby wanted Caleb’s gun for protection, so we went down to the shop to get it, but it was missing.”

“Missing?” Grissom repeats.

Barrow shrugs. “I think Jimmy might’ve stolen it.”

“And when would he have had the opportunity to do that?” Sofia asks.

“He had come around the shop a few days before,” Barrow admits, flustered now. “I-I know it was foreclosed, but I was gonna get it back, so I had held onto an extra key. The bank hadn’t changed the locks yet, so I’d been going inside to get stuff outta my office. Jimmy came with me—”

“When?” Sofia interrupts.

“I don’t know—a few days before he and Coby disappeared, before she asked for the gun. He met up with me at the shop, and he was going on and on about Kinney, saying how the guy was gonna kill him, but he had some plan to shake him off, something about a-a cell phone in a locker! I’m telling you, if anything happened to Jim, it was Kinney—or maybe Jimmy killed himself a-and Coby. Too much pressure, you know? Jimmy never did well, under pressure—”

“Mr. Barrow,” Sara says, “we’ve been able to prove that the bullets we recovered from Jimmy and Coby’s bodies didn’t come from Jimmy’s gun, which means that Jimmy didn’t shoot himself or Coby. Someone else did.”

“So look at Kinney, then—”

Sara shakes her head. “They were shot in your auto shop, Mr. Barrow. And we’re fairly certain that you were shot there, too. There was some kind of a gunfight. You had Coby in restraints, duct-taped to a chair, and she and Jimmy wound up dead. We found carpet fibers from the trunk of your vehicle in Coby’s hair when we recovered her body from the mountainside. That means that you transported her and Jimmy’s bodies after you killed them. We’re not looking at Jimmy or Kinney for this, Mr. Barrow, because we know what you did. You killed your godson and his fiancée over a few thousand dollars, and you were going to collect on the insurance policy you took out on him once you could be sure that you weren’t going to be accused of the crime.”

For an instant, Barrow looks frantic—a cornered man, outfoxed. His eyes are wide and fearful, and he gapes. “I’m—I’m not gonna say—,” he stammers.

“You don’t have to,” says Grissom. “We’re comparing the DNA from the bullet we extracted from the shop wall to the DNA sample I just collected from you right now. We’re also looking at your gun. We’re gonna check the ammunition against the bullets we found in Jimmy and Coby’s skulls. If everything matches up, and I think it will, then the D.A. is gonna charge you with murder.”

Barrow won’t say anything more, so the interview is over. Grissom and Sara load what they collected into the Denali and make the short drive back to the lab.

“We still don’t know what went down in that garage,” Sara laments.

“Well,” Grissom says. “He did let it slip that he was at the shop alone with Coby on the day she disappeared. If we put that information together with what we know about Coby’s call history, what do we get?”

“Coby went to the shop alone, without Jimmy. Then, when she found out that Barrow didn’t have Caleb’s gun in his possession, she called Jimmy from the shop, and he went there to meet her.” A pause while Sara thinks, pulling the Denali into its spot in the lab lot. “Warrick’s simulation showed that Jimmy likely entered the garage and started firing from the direction of the side entrance, moving towards the hydraulic lifts. That suggests that Jimmy did already have his father’s gun on him when he arrived at the shop. Does that mean Barrow’s telling the truth that Jimmy stole the gun?”

“Let’s say that it does,” Grissom reasons, “—or at least let’s say that Jimmy had gotten a hold of his father’s gun somehow, whether Barrow gave it to him or he stole it. What would possess Jimmy to walk into his godfather’s auto shop and start firing, knowing that Coby was in there?”

“What if Barrow had Coby restrained by the time that Jimmy arrived? Jimmy walks into the shop, sees his fiancée taped to a chair, Barrow holding a gun. It’s the person he loves—”

“That would certainly induce a man to fight,” Grissom says, imagining, empathizing.

“Barrow never had any intention to let those kids out of the shop alive,” Sara says. “He was in it for the insurance policy and to get Kinney off his back.”

“If he didn’t give Jimmy the gun, and Jimmy really did steal it, then that might explain his graze wound,” Grissom says. “He wasn’t counting on Jimmy having a gun, showing up to the shop.”

For now, this conjecture is the best that Grissom and Sara can come up with, barring further evidence. Sara shuts off the car and removes the keys from the ignition. She nods at Grissom. “Once more into the breach,” she says gamely.

After logging the evidence they collected from Barrow in the locker, Grissom and Sara head straight to Ballistics, where they find Nick with Bobby Dawson, taking notes on Barrow’s M9.

“Barrow’s gun had thirteen bullets in it, two missing,” Bobby says, making his report.

“We compared the bullets in the gun to the boxed ammunition Catherine recovered from Barrow’s office, and it’s a match,” Nick says. “They’re all from the same box. Serial numbers confirm it.”

“Serial numbers also confirm that the bullets y’all recovered from the shop weren’t fired from this gun,” Bobby says. “Check it out.”

He gestures to a small plastic rack in which he has arranged the bullets collected from Barrow’s gun, displaying them with the rims face-up. He passes Grissom a magnifying glass, and when Grissom looks down at the bullets through the magnifying glass, he is able to see the serial numbers printed on the breech faces of each round. Even just at a cursory glance, Grissom can see that the serial numbers are sequential. He passes the magnifying glass to Sara and steps aside so that she can also see.

“The numbers on the bullet Sara found in the lift and the bullet I recovered from the wall don’t fit in this sequence,” Nick says, “which means that they’re from a different box of bullets than the bullets that are in this gun.”

“Two unaccounted for bullets from this gun, two in the vics,” Sara says. “We already know that Jimmy didn’t use Caleb’s gun to shoot himself or Coby, so by process of elimination, we’ve gotta be looking at our murder weapon.”

“We are, and we can prove it,” says Bobby. He motions over to a microscope. This time, Sara looks first, then moves aside for Grissom. He sees a magnification of one of the shredded bullets recovered from the victims’ bodies, positioned breech end up. Though almost every part of the bullet has been destroyed, the final two digits of its serial number are intact. “These numbers aren’t a match to the ammunition from the gun you found on the mountain,” he says, a pleased note in his voice.

Sara catches his insinuation. “But they are a match to the sequence from Barrow’s gun.”

“We’ve got him,” Grissom says.

Assuming that Wendy is able to match Barrow’s DNA to the bullet from the wall, then they can make several assertions: first, that Barrow had contact with Jimmy and Coby on the day they died, despite his previously claims that he hadn’t; second, that, by his own admission, Barrow was with Coby at the shop in the hours leading up to her death; third, that Jimmy shot Barrow using Caleb Blanchett’s gun; fourth, that Barrow himself fired the two bullets that killed Jimmy and Coby from his gun; fifth, that Barrow used his car to transport Jimmy and Coby’s bodies to Fletcher Canyon. Add in the fact that Barrow had a $50,000 life insurance policy out on Jimmy, and that proves means, motive, and opportunity for the commission of the crimes—plus presence and use of the murder weapon. Barrow was there. He killed Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte.

The only lingering question concerns how it all went down—how Barrow managed to subdue and dispatch Jimmy and Coby once they arrived at the shop. The more the team can say about the logistics of the gunfight and the directionality of the shots fired, the better they’ll be able to convince a jury to convict Rick Barrow of the two homicides and show premeditation.

Warrick’s simulation has given them the math. Now they need to play it out—real bodies, human elements, and multiple minds in conversation to work out the chain of events and the context for everything that happened. Catherine and Warrick were on all day after they processed the garage, so they’ve already gone home, but Grissom convenes the rest of the team in the C.S.I. garage to play out the scenario.

To start out, they mark points of reference on the floor, using electrical tape in different colors to show where the various landmarks in the auto shop would be: the steel desk in the alcove, the hydraulic lifts, the shelves along the back wall, the front entrance into the garage, the door between the interior of the shop and the garage itself. They have an office chair on hand to use as a prop.

“Sara, you be Coby,” Grissom says. “Nick, you be Barrow. I’ll be Jimmy. Greg, you run Warrick’s simulation and take notes. Tell us how we need to move in order to make the shots line up.”

Grissom takes his place near where the side entrance to the garage would be. Nick and Sara occupy the space designated as the inside of the garage, Nick near the marks for the hydraulic lifts, Sara idling beside the office chair. Greg hangs out on the sidelines, holding a laptop with the simulation cued up on screen.

“Okay,” Grissom says, surveying the scene. “So Jimmy and Coby have been receiving threatening phone calls from Al Kinney. On January 6th, Jimmy stashes his cell phone in a safety deposit box at his bank, using it as insurance against Kinney coming after him. Still, he’s paranoid. Kinney doesn’t totally back off, even after he knows about the blackmail. So two days later, January 8th, Jimmy goes to his godfather, Barrow, and tells him about the phone in the box. Asks him for help.”

“—only Barrow doesn’t wanna help him. It’s too much of a risk, right?” Nick says, picking up Grissom’s narrative. He gestures to himself, indicating that he’s Barrow now. “From where I’m standing, Jimmy’s gotten me in some trouble. He’s got Kinney breathing down my neck. I’m being threatened. I want out of this play, so I tell Jimmy to get lost.”

Now Grissom speaks as if he’s Jimmy. “But the one thing you don’t count on is that, when I come to you for help, I steal back my father’s pistol from your office, so now I’m packing.”

“And I don’t know about all this,” Sara says, speaking as Coby. She indicates Grissom. “You told me you’d taken care of the Kinney problem when you deposited the cell phone at the bank. You want me to feel safe, so you tell me not to worry anymore. But I can tell you’re worried. And great minds think alike, right? So I decide that if we had your father’s gun, we could protect ourselves. I don’t know that you already swiped the gun from Barrow—because you didn’t want to tell me you’d had a fight with him, and he’d cut you off. So I call Barrow up, ask him if we can meet at the shop, totally clueless that he’s no longer a friend of ours.”

“It’s your call that gets me thinking,” Nick says. “I’ve just lost my shop to foreclosure. I’m down on my luck. I’ve got your creditor riding me, sending threats. So now I’m desperate, and desperation breeds inspiration, right? I’ve got this $50,000 life insurance policy on Jimmy sitting in my back pocket, and, all of a sudden, he’s telling me that he just left behind a message to the world that if anything happens to him, they should start looking at Kinney. Then his girl’s calling me up, saying she wants a meeting so that I can give her a gun. So I get this bright idea that maybe all my problems would just go away if I offed Jimmy and made it look like Kinney had done it. I’d get Kinney off my back, I’d get the money from the policy once the case is ruled a homicide, and I could get my shop back. So I decide to use Coby as bait to get Jimmy to come and see me again.”

“I call you from my place,” Sara says, “show up at the shop, and you stick a gun in my face, tell me to sit down in this chair.” Nick pantomimes holding a pistol and points it in Sara’s direction. She holds up her hands in surrender and sits in the exemplar office chair they’ve brought in for their simulation—the same type as the one she and Warrick recovered from the trash bins in the auto shop garage. “You tape me up. Then what? I, uh, can’t get to my phone like this, right?” She pantomimes like her arms are taped to the arms of the chair, so she can’t lift them. “So, uh, you’ve got to be the one who places the call.” She looks to Nick.

“Right,” he says. “So I get your phone, and I use it to call Jimmy on his new replacement cell phone, tell him I’ve got you hostage, and he’d better show up. Let you cry to him a bit.”

“What does Barrow say he wants from Jimmy, though?” Greg asks, piping up from his place on the sidelines. “I mean, usually, there are demands in a hostage situation, right? Wouldn’t Jimmy have been suspicious if Barrow’d asked him to come to the shop but didn’t want him to bring anything along for an exchange? Shouldn’t Barrow have asked for something, like money, maybe?”

Grissom shakes his head. “Jimmy didn’t have any money, and he knew it, and Barrow knew it. That was their whole problem to begin with. Barrow couldn’t have asked Jimmy for money. It wouldn’t have made sense.”

“Barrow couldn’t have asked them for anything else, either,” Nick says. “They didn’t have anything. I mean, I looked through Jimmy and Coby’s apartment. They could’ve pawned everything in there and not made more than a couple hundred bucks.”

Grissom considers the problem: Barrow either has to direct Jimmy to come to him emptyhanded or bearing a trade item both of them know is monetarily worthless. Either way, Jimmy has to realize that Barrow isn’t interested in bargaining or in letting him walk away from the shop. His fate is sealed once he walks through that side door. Yet he still goes to the shop. Why?

For a moment, everyone is silent, thinking through the variables of the case. Grissom glances around their mock crime scene, tries to recall anything that might be helpful. He looks to the tape marks on the floor, to the prop chair, and then to Sara. He remembers their search through Jimmy and Coby’s apartment, their discussion concerning the photographs.

 _They had each other_.

The answer comes to Grissom more as a feeling than a thought.

“Coby was his most valuable thing,” he says suddenly. “It was a simple exchange: his life for hers. He goes in, Barrow promises to let Coby go.”

Nick and Greg nod, willing to accept Grissom’s deduction, but Sara looks at him wearing an expression he cannot read—something intense and then gone, like the bright flare of a meteor across the night sky. Nick is already talking, picking up the theory Grissom has proposed and running with it.

“—and he’s got the gun,” he says, “so he’s thinking he’ll go in and save Coby.”

“So Jimmy shows up, and he’s packing heat,” says Greg. “That’s your cue.” He gestures to Grissom to step through the side door into the area demarcated as the garage.

“So I enter the garage, and I see Barrow has Coby,” Grissom says. He looks between Nick and Sara, located a few yards away from him, behind the tape indicating the hydraulic lifts. “Do I start shooting right away, from here?”

“Probably not,” says Greg. “For one thing, your shot’s obstructed by the hydraulic lifts. For another, you’re not near where we found the blood pool yet. For another, Barrow’s still right next to Coby—and there’s no way you’re shooting in the direction of your baby mama. I think you try to negotiate.”

“I don’t think that Jimmy liked guns,” Sara concurs. “He gave all his father’s war stuff away and only stole the gun back when he felt like he needed it to defend Coby. I don’t think he shoots until he feels like he has no other choice.”

“—and especially not because he’s gotta know Barrow’s a better shot than him,” Nick says.

“Okay, so I try to negotiate with you,” Grissom says to Nick, stepping forward, “but you’re not interested in anything I have to say. I’m more valuable to you dead than alive. You just wanted to get me down here. The plan was always to shoot me.” Grissom draws closer to Nick, and Nick moves temporarily away from Sara, towards Grissom at the center of the room.

“Somehow, something sets you off,” Nick says. “So there’s some kind of a struggle—”

“According to Warrick’s simulation, Jimmy probably fires from close to where Grissom is now. He’s got a clear shot at Barrow, but he’s still not quite to the lifts, so there’s room for that ricochet. Looks like he was probably off-balance. Maybe making a lunge.”

Grissom imagines the scene in his mind’s eye—what it must have looked like to Jimmy, seeing the woman he loved, held hostage at gunpoint by his godfather. He glances at Sara. Their eyes meet, and his pulse picks up. He imagines Barrow, in Nick’s place, making a movement. He has a split-second to decide how to react. It’s all instinct. He has to protect her. He pantomimes raising his gun, firing it twice in Nick’s direction.

“First shot grazes Barrow, just above his left eye,” Greg says, tapping keys on the laptop, probably pulling up one of Sara’s digital photos of Barrow’s scar, for comparison purposes.

“Switch hands,” Sara reminds Grissom, indicating his fake gun.

Grissom does as she directs.

“Second shot bites the concrete,” Greg says. “Something may have disrupted it.”

“I think I did,” says Nick. “No way I’m standing still while this kid’s shooting at me. I’m bigger than he is. I think I can overpower him, take his weapon. I think we’re meeting in the middle here.” He strides towards Grissom, and Grissom towards him. He reaches for Grissom’s fake gun. “We’re tussling.”

“Second shot discharges, hits the pavement, rebounds into the hydraulic lift,” Greg says. “The trajectories all match up.”

“Now Jimmy doesn’t fire again, so I’m thinking Barrow disarms him,” Sara says, directing the pantomime from her chair.

Grissom nods, agreed. He pretends to lose his gun to Nick. “So I’m disarmed,” he says, “but I’m still fighting.”

“Now’s when I shoot you,” Nick infers, pointing his gun hand at Grissom’s head, just above his left temple.

Greg shakes his head. “That’s a no-go,” he says. “You’re not quite to the blood pool yet. Plus, the angle’s off for the trajectory of the wound. Doc noted a slight upward trajectory on Jimmy’s wound. Barrow’s taller than Jimmy by two inches. If they were both standing upright when Barrow shot Jimmy, then the wound would have been angled downward or straight across. Barrow had to be on the ground—”

“—or on his way there,” Grissom infers. He pretends to shoulder into Nick, a dive-tackle. Nick catches his intention and pretends to fall, lowering himself to the floor and firing off a fake shot as he does so.

“Okay, now you’re to the blood pool,” Greg says, approving.

In his mind’s eye, Grissom sees the trajectory of the bullet, how it would hit his head from close range and impact at just less than a thirty degree angle.

“That’s a kill shot,” Nick surmises.

“No way I’ve been sitting still through all of this,” Sara says. “Jimmy walked into the room, and I started struggling. Jimmy gets shot, and I try to wrench out of this chair—that’s just instinct.”

“You don’t get far, though,” Nick says. “You’re taped in.”

Sara pretends to fight against bonds in the chair, and it rattles in response to her motion. She quirks an eyebrow. “I tip it over, maybe? End up on the floor?”

“And that explains the slight downward angle on Coby’s wound and puts her in position to contribute to the blood pool,” Greg agrees. “Barrow walks over, caps her while she’s on the floor. He’s not leaving a witness.”

“So then he stuffs the bodies in his trunk, cleans up the garage, drives up the canyon,” Nick says. “He knows Kinney’s threat is neutralized, on account of the phone, so all he has to do is wait until somebody finds those bodies. Then he can collect his insurance, get his shop back.”

“God,” says Sara, standing up from her chair, frowning at their mock crime scene. She is still imagining, still playing through the commission of the crime in her mind. “That’s horrible, that she had to—that he—” She doesn’t finish her thought, but Grissom understands. He wants to move closer to her, to set his hand on the small of her back, commiserating, but he can’t. They meet eyes, briefly.

Then. “Let’s clean up these markers,” he says, motioning to the mess on the floor.

After they have the garage back in order, Grissom retreats to his office to write his final notes. Soon, Greg texts him from DNA that Wendy has confirmed the match between the Barrow exemplar and the biological materials from the bullet, and that’s the last puzzle piece, fitted into place—case closed, at least until it goes to trial.

Eventually, Sara appears at his door. “I’ve got our brief ready to go out to the D.A.,” she says. “Do you, uh, want to look over it before I fax it over?”

He shakes his head. “I trust you.” He knows she didn’t really come to him looking for approval anyway. They’re coming up on their thirteenth hour at the lab, and while they’ve both certainly had longer work days than this one, they’re tired and ready to go home. When she smiles at him, he sees sleeplessness at the corners of her eyes. “You gonna head out soon?”

“I think so. You?”

“As soon as I finish up these notes.”

They hold their poses, considering each other, the aftermath of their last few days, how hiking in the mountains with their dog had led to them uncovering a double-homicide. A tragedy, really. Solving a case like this one never results in straightforward relief—there’s always some sadness laced in with it, some shock at the badness in the world.

Jimmy Blanchett and Coby Ohte were just two kids who had everything go wrong for them, who trusted untrustworthy people and got in way over their heads. That they could be missing for two months and not be missed speaks to the awfulness of their situation. Except for a chance encounter, who knows for how long their bodies would have remained on that mountain? And except for questions of laterality and proximity, who knows if their killer would have ever been charged with their deaths?

Thinking about everything that led to their murders puts a sour feeling in the pit of Grissom’s stomach, and he can only imagine what it does to Sara, who has always been more empathetic than he is. One look, and he asks her, without words, if she’s all right. One look, and she tells him, without words, that she is, though she wants to go home—wants them to go home together.

The thought comes to Grissom, unbidden, that he would do for her as Jimmy had done for Coby, in a heartbeat, without thinking, just feeling, just with love.

“Goodnight,” she says.

“Goodnight,” he says back.

He watches after her when she leaves and misses her again, already. There is a question that he wants to ask her, and someday he'll be brave enough to do it. He counts more beats. Then—

• • • 

The morning light is still in its pastels, and Sara squints against it, turning down another West Sahara road. She has to pick up Hank, and then she can go home to Grissom, and then they can sleep. This case wasn’t as grisly as some they’ve worked, and she’s glad to have solved it, but it has still, in some ways, drained her, and she is ready for a reprieve, away behind her private walls, in a place beyond the lab. This time, she’ll insist to Grissom: no going in until their next start of shift. They’re going to spend their full eleven hours at home. Maybe take a bath together. She’s already fantasizing about it, stepping out of her car at the doggy daycare, stuffing her keys into her pocket—

—when Grissom’s car swings into the parking lot beside hers.

At first, she wonders if something’s wrong, but then Grissom opens his door, and she sees his expression of earnest confusion.

“I thought we said I was gonna get Hank,” he says, closing his door behind him.

“We, uh, didn’t say,” she says. “I just assumed that since I’d dropped him off, I’d, uh, get him, too. I didn’t think you’d—”

She could explain further, but they both understand. Miscommunication, apparently. They smirk, amused at themselves. Oops.

Grissom steps closer to Sara and opens his arm to her, inviting her to fit in at his side. Though the walk from the parking lot to the daycare is a short one—just a few yards—she happily accepts him as her escort, pressing in against the warmth of his body. After so long spent seeing him but not touching him at work, the contact feels immeasurably nice, right in a way that nothing else is. He wraps his arm around the small of her back and holds her to him.

“Mea culpa,” he apologizes, but she doesn’t mind the mistake.

“Hank’s gonna freak,” she says, biting back her widest smile.

Grissom doesn’t answer, just presses a sloppy peck to her brow, barely connecting for the awkward angle. They hurry through the parking lot together, eager to get out of the morning cold. When they reach the door to the daycare, Grissom holds it open for her.

“After you, my dear.”

There are two sitters working the front desk, and they both perk up when the door opens.

“Dr. Grissom, Sara, is it that time already?” says the one.

The other stands up off her stool. “He’s in the playroom. I’ll bring him right out for you.” She gestures to her coworker. “Get them the, uh—the thing from in his locker.”

“Oh, right,” says the other sitter, turning to the row of cubbies along the back wall behind the desk and searching for the one labeled HANK.

Grissom and Sara go to the desk to see whatever it is they need to see, and the sitter rustles out an item from the cubby: flat, round, and palm-sized, wrapped in brown paper. She starts to peel the paper back, but before she can reveal whatever is inside, her coworker opens the door from the playroom, letting Hank into the reception area. His bark booms against the ceramic floor tiles, and he bounds forward, his tongue extended, jowls flapping, tail on motor. Instantly, he is all over Grissom and Sara, licking them and slobbering.

“Hey, buddy,” Sara says, laughing.

He barks and leaps to lick her arms, then Grissom’s.

The sitter who let Hank into the room laughs, too. “Are your mumma and daddy here to get you?” she coos. “Are you ready to go home?”

Behind the desk, the other sitter has managed to unwrap the item from Hank’s cubby. As Grissom gestures Hank down and takes over his leash from the other sitter, Sara turns to see what the item is: Hank’s paw print, pressed in clay, the words HANK G. scratched beneath it. Once he has Hank at heel, Grissom flanks her.

“We had a craft day,” the sitter explains.

“That’s great,” Sara says, laughing again. To Grissom. “You should hang it in your office, now that everyone knows you have a dog, anyway.”

The sitter behind the desk overhears Sara’s quip. She reacts, genuinely surprised, as if she can’t imagine anything stranger. “The people at your office didn’t know that you two have a dog?”


End file.
